


A Glass of Wine Rebuilt

by Toastermann



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Romance, Comedy, F/M, Humor, Teen Romance, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 94,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29780511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toastermann/pseuds/Toastermann
Summary: Shinji and Asuka learn about themselves and fall in love, causing massive ramifications. A remake of the late 94Saturn's quintessential Shinji/Asuka story, it is part tribute and part experiment, taking the structure and plot of the original wacky shipping story while attempting to maintain series-true characterization.
Relationships: Aida Kensuke/Ayanami Rei, Ikari Shinji/Souryuu Asuka Langley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Glass of Wine](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/768771) by 94Saturn. 



She always thought of herself as a soldier. No one had ever called her a soldier, of course. Not her father, not her mother, not the myriad combat trainers, teachers, or lab techs that had populated her childhood. The title was entirely self-appointed. To her way of thinking, soldiers were the best. More importantly, people respected soldiers.

Nobody ever said it would be easy, and she never expected it would be. This was a war after all. Some monster comes crashing through your city, killing people, then you owed it a kick in the teeth.

But Asuka Langley Soryu never thought it could hurt this much. She sat in the kitchen staring at the table, trying to push the phantoms out of her mind. It was a ritual occurrence. Every operation brought its own phantoms—little synaptic twinges and ghost pains that flitted across her body, fallout from synching minds with something so inhumanly vast. During her first live fire exercise she hadn't unfurled her AT field quickly enough and a cruise missile blew a hole in her torso armor. She felt that sucking chest wound for a week after, tossing and turning in the middle of the night, trying to stop the bleeding. It was a lot for an eight year old to handle, but it was nothing compared to this.

She wore a two year old sweater, bought before her growth spurt. It was too small and hugged tight against her body. She didn't have an excuse for it but she desperately needed one. The truth was just too embarrassing—that she could still feel the magma pressing in on her. Its heat was dulled by the D-Type equipment, but she could still feel the weight of it. It was suffocating. The sweater kept a constant pressure against her skin that was real. It helped override the phantom feeling, at least when she didn't focus on it.

The swish of the front door opening reached her ears, but Asuka didn't look up. She heard Misato march into the room, heels clacking the wood floor. Her superior and guardian set her briefcase down on the table and grabbed a beer from the fridge. She took a long gulp, draining the day away.

"Hey, Asuka," she said. "Where's Shinji?"

"Cleaning duty at the school."

"Good to see you, too." Misato looked at her ward's hands. "You wanna talk about that?"

Asuka turned the cigarette over in her fingers. She had honestly forgotten about it, and why she had picked up the pack in the first place—lifted out of Kaji's desk drawer when he wasn't looking. She supposed she didn't really want the thing. Shy had she even stolen it in the first place?

Had she a better mind for introspection, she might have noticed the cigarette for the cry that it was. As it stood, she simply set it down.

"I don't really want it," she said.

Misato walked to the sink and drained what was left of her beer. Asuka watched her, confused.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Going for something harder." Her guardian gave a smile. "Work has been rough lately. For both of us. I'm feeling wine."

"I'm underage."

Misato didn't turn away from where she rummaged through the cupboard. "You go to war every other week, Asuka. I think you can have a drink."

"And end up like you?" Asuka said. She saw the slight hitch in Misato's movements and knew that her words had connected. It was a simple payback. For what, the teen had no idea, a consequence of a mind grown beyond its petty influences. Misato had seen her being weak, and she deserved to hurt for it.

Misato brought two glasses back to the table and poured. "Light up, then."

"What?"

"Light the cigarette. See what you think."

Misato grabbed one and lit it. Her first draw was long and deep. She exhaled calmly.

Asuka, never one to be outdone, snatched up the lighter and did as she was told. She put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled, all at once and far too much. Smoke stung her throat and needled through her lungs. She shuddered, coughed, and stamped the cigarette out.

Misato grinned. "Not so good?"

"Horrible!"

"Yep." The Captain put out her own, then slid one of the glasses across the table. "I'll trade you one bad habit for another. Deal?"

Asuka said nothing. She picked up the glass and sipped, partly out of curiosity, but mostly to get the smoke out of her throat. The wine certainly worked. It was a shocking contrast, from the ash to the fruity tang of the wine. It was a fuller taste then she had expected—the downside to a palette dampened by carbonates and sugar since childhood.

"Like it?" Misato asked.

Asuka shrugged. "Wondering what's behind it."

"You look like you could use it." Misato grinned. "Who says there's something behind it?"

"I do."

The two sat in silence for a long time, drinking and looking at everything but each other. In the quiet, Asuka became aware again of the phantoms that closed in around her. One hand subconsciously moved to her shoulder.

"You feel the pressure, don't you."

Asuka looked up. "What did you say?"

"All that heat, down there in the belly of the volcano." Misato was looking at her over the rim of her glass. "You can still feel it, can't you? Pressing in. Suffocating. Drowning and dragging you down. You were down there for a total of twenty-three minutes, and for every single instant of it, you couldn't feel anything but the weight of the world trying to crush you."

"Like you would understand."

"But I'm not wrong." Misato pointed to her briefcase. "Those files aren't just for show. I really do read them, and I am actually briefed on your mental state. Y'know, beyond this past month of firsthand experience."

Suddenly, the sweater didn't help a damn bit. Asuka stared at the table and felt the renewed pressure against her flesh. The sensation flowed in and out like waves breaking on a beach. Between the lulls, her synapses were so dead to it that she could barely imagine the feeling. At their peak she felt like she was being strangled.

Misato waited a moment, then spoke. "You know how I know? I mean, I could have guessed, but I'm not that good."

Another person would assume the question as rhetorical and wait, but Asuka didn't. She had already figured it out.

"Shinji," she said, meeting the Captain's eyes. "He was down there, too."

"With no suit. If you think it was painful, imagine what he had to feel. Despite all the claustrophobia and suffocating and all that, the thing that his report has that you would certainly lack is the sensation of his skin boiling off." Misato took another sip. "Apparently it comes and goes. So that's fun."

Asuka ignored the sarcastic barb. "And you want me to, what, help him out?"

"Is that so terrible? Sometimes people help each other, Asuka. That's part of growing up. You aren't an island, as much as you'd like yourself to be."

"I don't think I'm an island."

"You want me to grab your psych report? Literal reams of evidence directly from your mouth. Stuff about living by yourself and thinking for yourself and not needing anyone else for anything ever no matter what."

"I never said that!"

"Pretty sure that's an exact quote from when you were eight."

"Whatever." Asuka stood up from the table, pulled the sweater tight to ride out the next wave. "I don't need Shinji."

"I'm not saying you need him. I doubt he needs you, either. You're both totally self-sufficient."

That last comment stopped Asuka in her tracks. She turned. "In what world is _he_ self-sufficient?"

Misato raised her eyebrows from over the brim of her glass. She knew her words had hit the mark, returning barb for barb. Asuka realized it, and the realization infuriated her.

"Explain that," she said.

"He cooks." A hand waved around the kitchen.

"Do better."

Misato lost her playful mood. It was a brief change, a hardening of the eyebrows above a sharp glare, but it was enough. It was the look that she gave over the inter-plug comm suite, the look that came with shouts about AT fields and blue patterns. Most importantly, it was a look that Asuka had never seen in this kitchen before. On some level it was a frightening revelation.

"Asuka, Shinji Ikari lives life alone. And I know that's something that you crave, but for most people, loneliness is a problem to be solved. He's become self-sufficient out of necessity not want, and the first thing he does with his self-sufficiency is to help the people around him." She held up a hand. "Don't scoff yet. I can feel your scoff coming on."

"Don't tell me what to do."

Misato gestured at the table with splayed fingers, in the way of a person who gestures with no point but loads of emphasis. "Shinji came here and fought in a war he didn't know existed without so much as a thank you. He has continued to put his life on the line ever since. He has fought in six separate engagements, three of which you were present for."

"He's a pilot. That's his job."

"No, that's your job. You don't know any better. Three months ago Shinji Ikari was a _kid_. He spent his time reading and playing cello and being a _kid_ as best he could. Now he is here, doing the thing you do as well as you do—"

"He does not!"

Misato held up her hand. "The point is, he has put his life on the line on six separate occasions and, aside from me, has received no appreciation. Some people would call that being a hero, especially if some people had been about to die in a volcano and were saved by someone who, for all intents and purposes, could have let them be crushed to death."

Asuka frowned. "You ordered him down there."

"I didn't have time to order him down there. Your cable snapped and he was in that volcano. No hesitation. I hadn't even made a decision yet. Honestly, I might have told him to hold back. One Evangelion, to some people in this organization, is an acceptable loss to defeat an Angel."

"I don't believe you."

"I don't care." Misato leaned back and cradled her wine against her chest. "I know none of this is really getting through. You're fourteen and I'm twenty-nine, so by default I'm all kinds of wrong. But do me a favor when you storm off to your room and just think about it, okay?"

Asuka scoffed. She made it the most German scoffy scoff she could, and then stomped away to her room, trying to ignore the truth in her commander's words.

((()))

Shinji Ikari came home to a series of closed doors. All three of his roommates were boarded up for the night at 4:30, and he was left with an empty house. He wondered what was wrong, and in true Shinji Ikari fashion, began to think of it as his fault.

He sat down at the living room table and pulled out his books. The TV stayed off out of long habit. Being raised by an educator had taught him focus, if nothing else, and he had a tendency to blot out distractions. In addition, TV was a passive activity, and if the past week had taught him anything, it was that passivity let the pain in.

Shinji froze as the sensation built from nowhere. He dropped his pencil and braced himself against the table. Thinking about the pain inevitably brought it on. He waited, and it hit. Ghostfire washed up his arms and across his chest. His breath fled him and he bit down to stifle the whimper that built in his throat. Deep in the throes of it, Shinji wondered how long he would have to put up with these flashes. The false break in his arm had taken a week to go away, and the stomach aches from his second sortie had faded just a couple weeks ago.

How long would this last? Another month? Or would this be permanent? How long could he live with surface nerves that occasionally thought they were on fire?

The moment passed, and he leaned back against the wall, eyes closed. For a moment, he was conscious of little more than his respiration, focusing fully on regulation. All of his friends in Okinawa and he was stuck here, his skin not-boiling him into fits of near-epilepsy.

His breathing calmed, and he opened his eyes to see one of his roommates standing in front of him. His knee jerked, smashing into the underside of the table. New pain.

"Asuka," he said, rubbing his knee. "How long have you been there?"

The Second Child shrugged. "About halfway through the seizure. What the hell was that?"

"Nothing."

"Uh-huh."

Asuka turned on the TV and sat down next to him. It was about the worst place she could possibly sit to watch TV, since she had to look through his head just to see it. Shinji was immediately suspicious.

"We need a couch," she told him. When he didn't respond, she went on. "Sitting on the floor all the time really bites."

"I'm sorry."

Asuka glared at him. It was the glare that always served as a harbinger for angry German-speak, and a glare he had learned well. "You're really the most frustrating person I know."

"I'm sorry?"

"Gott im Himmel." Asuka took a breath. "I know about your skin thing, okay? I have the same thing. A similar thing, at least."

Shinji wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with that information. "Okay," he said, in his best attempt at saying something.

Asuka went on. She picked at the table in front of her and avoided his eyes. "I feel like I'm being suffocated."

"Okay."

"Some days it's like I—" She stopped. "Look, do you feel any of this, too? Because if you don't then there's no use for me in even talking to you about it."

"I do feel it. I do."

"Because really, I don't need to talk about this, you know."

"Sure."

"I could just leave you here with your bubbly skin and do something fun instead. I could totally do that. I mean, this is all just for your benefit."

"Okay."

Her fingernail ran across his physics book, digging into the groove of the spine. They both watched it in silence.

"How did you do on the test?" she asked.

Shinji swallowed. "Well enough."

"You got a C."

"Yeah."

Asuka's finger reached the end of its run, tapped the cover, and retracted into her fist. "Thank you," she said.

Shinji blinked. "Huh?"

"Thank you," she said, still not looking at him. "For the volcano. You didn't have to do that but you did. So thanks, I guess."

Shinji Ikari learned what it felt like to fracture his brain. Of all the things that she could have said, this was certainly among the most unbelievable.

Her unexpected gratitude broke open the mystery of their conversation, and its secrets were suddenly clear to him. Asuka, for the first time ever, sympathized with him in some capacity. He had no idea what to do with that information. His left hand decided that it wanted to be on her shoulder, but he stopped it halfway. It was clear that his left hand had lost its fucking mind. Still, it stayed there, suspended in space, halfway between a hug and a high-five.

"And don't say anything, either. I don't need anything back." She leaned back and fell into his arm. For a minute he pulled at it, but Asuka held firm, keeping it pinned to the wall. "That's fine where it is," she said.

"What—"

"Shut up."

Shinji shut up. They sat for a minute, her with her hands in her lap, him with one stuck behind her, the silence filled by the TV's jabbering adverts. Shinji became uncomfortably aware of where his hand was. Eventually, he set it on her shoulder. It wasn't an embrace, but it was as close as he would dare. For a moment his mind flashed back to that horrible moment in Rei Ayanami's apartment—a flash of suppressed memories, of pale flesh and red eyes that bored into him.

Asuka closed her eyes. "I bet you really like this," she said.

 _Not really,_ he thought, but kept his mouth shut. He had no idea what to do, so he sat, feeling the needles in his arm, and watched her face. With her eyes closed, he actually had a minute to look at her without fear. She had a serene expression, and he felt that she was enjoying this more than he was. Probably the pain it caused him, he assumed.

Then her expression changed. Her hands tightened around her sweater, and she grimaced. Shinji wasn't sure what it was—maybe genuine sympathy, or maybe just a remnant link from their synchronization training—but he felt he understood what was happening. She was feeling the pain again, just like he did.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"What the hell do you think?" Asuka looked at him. "Don't you say another word. You got that?"

Shinji nodded, though he desperately wanted to know why. He got his answer when she leaned into him. No matter what had come before, this was now definably a hug. There was no doubt. Her head was on his shoulder, and he couldn't smell anything beyond the fragrance of her hair. Her shoulder dug into his ribs, and he shifted around it, accommodating.

"Asuka—" he started.

"What did I say?"

"Sorry."

Her body was completely tense, and she held her arms tight to her body. Shinji finally let his arm relax into the embrace, and she didn't kick away from him. Tentatively, he brought his other arm around and laced his fingers together. After a moment, he realized he was holding her, and how insane the whole situation was really hit him.

But he didn't move. He waited out the ten minutes it took for her pain to go away in silence. When she finally did move, his hands disappeared from her body.

The Second Child stood and looked down at him. "You're welcome," she said, and walked away to her room. He heard the door close behind her, and he was alone in the living room.

"Thanks," said Shinji Ikari, to no one in particular.


	2. Chapter 2

"And then they hugged for like ten minutes. He kind of held her, too, from what I can gather. What do you think?"

Misato Katsuragi's voice rang around the empty command center. It was 0100 on a Saturday and the facility was operating on a skeleton night shift. Below her the secondary techs milled at their desks, obscured in the half-powered night lighting. They were the only staffers in the chamber, aside from the token security posted at each entrance.

Perhaps the area should have been stocked to capacity in the event of an emergency, considering the time it took to draw primary command staff into position would take a half hour that Earth might never get back. Katsuragi wasn't proud of the lax attitude, but Nerv was an organization that ran on a civilian mindset cultivated over a decade of peacetime. Keeping the staff on first level alert at all times was a sure way to breed fatigue, fatigue that could cost lives in a crisis. There had yet to be more than one Angel attack in any three week period—and never one at night—so at least there was some precedent behind her calculated risk.

"You're playing with fire." Ritsuko Akagi didn't look up from her datapad. She just sat there, sipping coffee and passing judgment.

Misato frowned. "Why do I talk to you?"

"We're friends."

"Remind me why."

"Shared experience?" Ristuko turned and smiled at her. "What do you want me to say?"

"Dunno. How about, 'Misato, you are a genius'?"

"Misato, you are a genius."

"That's a start. Now say it like you mean it."

"Don't ask me to lie, Captain."

"Such a bitch."

Ritsuko laughed. "In all seriousness, none of my doctorates are in psychology. How should I know if your little scheme will pan out?"

"I don't know! I have no way to gauge any of it. I keep trying to think about what I was like at fourteen, but then I realize that I didn't have to fight a war when I was fourteen, and all that wisdom gets thrown out the window." Misato sighed and slumped into the chair at tac ops one, where Lieutenant Hyuga spent most of his working hours. "Help me out, Rits. I'm basing all this on your advice, after all."

The scientist's fingers stopped their ceaseless tapping. "On my what now? I never told you to try and push those two together."

"Then what was all that crap about hedgehogs getting it on?"

"Misato…" Ritsuko took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. "You told me he was having troubles at school and that he had no friends. I was just trying to explain why."

"And I'm just trying to help him with that!"

"I didn't mean for you to try and force the kid into anything."

"Really?" Misato sat forward. "Then what was all that stuff with Rei's ID card? Having him run it to her apartment? You're telling me that's not some kind of setup?"

Ritsuko held up a hand. "I'm not saying what you're doing is a bad thing. In theory, of course I want Shinji to be happy."

"Have you ever heard yourself talk?"

"All I'm saying is that when you looked around to find a hedgehog for Shinji to get close to, why did you pick the spiniest hedgehog in Tokyo-3?"

"You're just married to this metaphor, aren't you?"

"You brought it up." Ritsuko looked at her friend. "What's the end goal here, Misato? What's the best case scenario? They fall in love, get married at fourteen and have babies?"

"You're asking _me_ about the end goal of a successful relationship? Doctor, that's ill-advised." Misato grinned. It was infectious, and got the other woman grinning, too.

"What a fool I have been," she said.

"I don't know," Misato said, sobering to the question. "Each of them needs a friend, you know? They need parents and commanders and all that, too, but what they could really use is a friend. Someone who gets them from their own angle. If they could just get along, the two of them might make it out of this okay."

"I've never heard you this morose. What's the world coming to when you're the cynical one?"

"It's late, it's dark, and I've got nothing to do but think." Misato shrugged. "Hard to be sunny when the sun isn't out."

Ritsuko laughed and spun back to her datapad. Misato wasn't sure what to make of that.

((()))

There was no window through which the morning light could enter, but the day arrived just the same. Shinji Ikari awoke to the sound of a city growing and chose to rise with it. It was a deep basal thrum that reverberated through the rebar in the building and the marrow in his bones, equal parts utilitarian defense and incidental alarm clock. The intensity varied depending on which blocks were scheduled for nightshift on any given cycle, but it made little difference. The tiniest quake was enough to jar him, even after months living in the city.

He knew that some of the natives had learned to sleep through their city's daily growth spurt. When asked about it, Toji had acted like he had never felt it. Shinji believed him. He imagined Toji as a person who could sleep through anything. Nothing bothered Toji.

He climbed from bed and got dressed. He didn't sigh in annoyance. He didn't wage a mental war with laze to push the covers away. He simply got up and got to the day, pulling on a shirt as he pushed away the dregs of a dream where he lay as an ant in the dark of a god's mind.

((()))

Asuka buried her face in the pillow and waited for the city quake to cease. She had half an intention to go back to sleep when it was over, though she knew that wouldn't be the case. She was awake now and the damage was done. Still, she waited until it was over to get up, just so the city wouldn't be the thing that got her up in the morning. She wouldn't give it the satisfaction.

When she had fastened her uniform and combed her hair, she walked to the door and listened. The sink gurgled in the kitchen and the scent of breakfast touched her nose. Par for the course, Shinji was up before her. She held still, one hand on the door frame while she waited. She had no intention of walking into that kitchen before she was damn well good and ready.

A full week since the kid had touched her and he had yet to bring it up once. What the hell did that mean?

Asuka looked at her watch, figured she would give it another minute. She looked at the mirror next to her and evaluated the reflection like a target assessment. Her hair was perfect, her build athletic, and her legs shapely. She could outrun, outthink, and out-hot any other girl in her class. She knew those to be facts. What she didn't know was why she was thinking about them now and what relevance they had to the idiot cooking her breakfast and why the hell he didn't want to do the touching thing again because for God's sake had he not looked at her at all! What in the hell was the matter with him?

So it was that, hopping mad and possessing no game plan, Asuka left her room and headed for the kitchen.

((()))

Misato caught the finale of Asuka's thrashing from the living room. It was a spectacular finish, filled with a tirade of insults and a lot of Shinji apologetics. The main thing Asuka seemed to be mad about was her breakfast, which meant that the thing Asuka was really mad about wasn't the breakfast at all. The spiniest hedgehog in Tokyo-3. Misato thought about intervening, but in the time it took her to reach a decision, Asuka was gone.

She finally entered the kitchen and saw Shinji sweeping a broken plate and the remains of a tamagoyaki off the floor. "Hey," she said. "Everything okay?"

"Sure." He stood and dumped the plate and food into the trash. "Sorry about the plate."

"I don't care about the plate, kiddo."

"Yours is on the table," he said, and went back to the counter.

Misato frowned, but she sat down and started to eat, anyway. The tamagoyaki was fresh, and he had even set out a cup of tea—his quiet, un-intrusive attempt to keep a can out of her hand until the evening. It was that last touch that killed her frown.

"Shinji," she said. "What was Asuka mad about?"

He shrugged. "The food."

"What about it?"

"She doesn't like Japanese cooking. Sometimes she throws things."

 _Nonsense._ Misato chewed, mulling over her next words. She had no idea what to tell the kid, no fabrication in her back pocket. She was crap at lying, anyway. She thought back to her conversation with Asuka a week ago, the catalyst for all of the complications and tension since, and realized that she couldn't take that same tact with Shinji. She could play hardball with Asuka. The kid would come back at her just as hard, if not harder. If she was going to help this kid, she needed a defter touch.

"How did you like making out with Asuka?" she asked.

The spoon slipped from his fingers and clattered in the sink. Shinji's head whipped around and he looked at her, shocked. "What are you talking about?"

"I share a door with the living room, kiddo." Misato grinned. "Don't think I didn't notice your smooching."

"We didn't kiss or anything!" Shinji stared at her. "I don't even know what we did. It sucked."

"I know." Misato laughed despite herself. She stretched her foot out and toed a chair out for him. "Come sit down. The dishes can wait."

"I've got school in a bit."

"You can be late."

"No I can't."

"I'll write a note. Sit," she said. After a moment of hesitation, Shinji finally did as he was told. She smiled at him. "Now, was that thing with Asuka really so bad?"

"It was strange," he said.

"Strange is good. Strange is fun." Misato could tell by his face that she wasn't getting through to him, so she changed tact. "Why do you think Asuka did that?"

"How should I know?"

"Because she's your friend."

Again, he stared at her. "That's not really the right word, Misato."

She kept her expression even. "And why not? The two of you are teammates, roommates, you go to the same school. She ought to be your closest friend. What's stopping that? Just because she's a little standoffish?"

"A little standoffish," he repeated, incredulous.

"Okay. Maybe a lot standoffish. The point is, you aren't the easiest kid to get along with, either. Everyone has their problems, Shinji. Sometimes we need someone else to help us solve them."

He nodded. "That's what Asuka said."

That was unexpected. "She said she needed help?"

"No, I needed help." He shrugged. "She came to me because I needed it. She saw me, uh…"

"Shaking?" Misato offered. He nodded.

"She saw me and sat down with me. I guess she thought she owed me for the volcano, so she sat there and helped me out."

"Oh, wow." Misato reached over and ruffled his hair. "You're so damn oblivious it hurts."

Shinji pushed her hand away and stood up. He finished prepping his lunch and started packing his school bag. Misato sipped her tea and watched him, waiting. She could see him thinking it over, dissecting her words, replaying the moment in question over and over in his mind's eye. That was the difference between the Second and Third Children. Asuka understood what she wanted to understand, when she wanted to understand it—which was always immediately. Shinji took his time, worked it out privately, and did what he thought was best. He had a sharp mind and a big heart. Both were equally commendable and pitiable.

When he was finally ready to leave, he stopped at the door to the corridor and looked back at her.

"Yes?" she said.

"She was in pain, too," he said. "The volcano hurt both of us. Right then, I understood Asuka better. All the synch training helped, but nothing like that."

"That's a good thing," Misato said, but he kept looking at the floor, his brow furrowed.

"I just don't know why she went back to being…" He trailed off.

Misato stood and walked over to him. "Shinji, women make no sense. I can say that having been one for twenty-nine years."

"You're twenty-nine?"

"That's classified." She set a hand on his shoulder. "But I am, and all of that experience tells me one thing: do something nice for Asuka. She's had a hard life, too, probably harder than you would ever expect. Maybe one day she'll tell you about it."

"Yeah, right," he said. Misato ignored him.

"Keep doing nice things for her, because despite all the yelling and screaming and apologizing, and the hopes and dreams of all of humanity, it's just the two of you out there most of the time, and you've got to keep each other safe. Keep helping her, and she'll help you, too. That's what friends are."

Shinji looked at her. "What am I supposed to do for her?"

Misato sighed. "Do you want me to do everything for you?"

"I'm sorry!"

"Go to school," she said, and pushed him away with a light shove. "And remember: synch test tonight. Four o'clock on the dot!"

"Sure thing," he said.

Misato watched him until he was gone. She walked back into the kitchen and scooped up the phone, hitting speed dial four. The phone rang once and picked up. There was no voice on the other end, just the silence of a Section 2 agent listening to her.

"He just left. Sorry about the hold-up, if it made you guys split your detail." She sipped her tea and got no response. "So are you trained to just not respond ever or what?" she asked. More silence.

"Poop-ass," she tried. When she still got nothing, she hung up, tossed the tea cup in the sink, and went to take a shower.

((()))

It was an idea that sank roots deep in his brain and started festering immediately, and like all bad ideas, he knew it wouldn't go away unless it was released. It hit him halfway to school, germinating out of Misato's words and what he remembered of Asuka's tirade—her absolute hatred of Japanese food, and the shattered plate on the floor. _"All it ever is with you people is vegetables and wheat! Would it kill you to eat something straight off the hoof, once in a while?"_

" _Keep helping her, and she'll help you, too. That's what friends are."_

Shinji got to the intersection of Ozawa and Prefect, and found two friends waiting on him. Kensuke looked up from his phone, which he had been checking repeatedly for the past seven minutes. The kid was a nervous wreck. Toji didn't seem to share the feeling.

"You're late," Kensuke said.

Toji stood up from the guardrail he was lounging on, and the three of them started walking. "Something happen with the demon bear?" he asked.

"Is that what we're calling her now?" Kensuke asked. "I can never keep up with the nicknames."

"The nicknames are contextual, man," said Toji.

"Look who learned a new word," Kensuke shot back. Toji moved toward him and sent him reeling, hands up in mock surrender. "Kidding, kidding!" he said.

Suzuhara turned to Shinji. "But seriously, what did Blitzkrieg Bitchy do now?"

"Don't say stuff like that," Shinji said.

"Why the hell not?"

"Yeah, why the heck not?" Kensuke echoed.

Shinji shrugged. "She's a friend."

His compatriots were silent a minute, trying to come to terms with his words. The silence put a smile on Shinji's face.

"Since when?" Toji said, after a moment.

"I don't know."

"Well, we don't just make pacts with the devil every day, man." Toji crossed his arms. "We've got standards!"

"Contextual standards," Kensuke put in.

"Shut your face! Can't you see we have a mind to save, here?" When he looked back to Shinji, he was still frowning. "You don't gotta like her just because you work together. Trust me. My dad hates the people he works with."

"It's not that." Shinji smiled. "She's a lot like me, I guess."

"Now I know you're losing it!"

Kensuke shook his head. "No, man, he seems serious."

"Maybe." Toji crossed his arms. "Just don't expect her to be let in the group."

"That's fine," Shinji said. "I just hope you'll want to come to the party."

Both his friends perked at that. "You're throwing a party?" asked Toji.

"Yeah, but you have to keep it a secret."

Kensuke nudged Toji. "Okay, now I agree. He's losing it."

"What sort of party?" Toji pressed.

"A dinner party," said Shinji, warming to his own insane idea. "A German dinner party."


	3. Chapter 3

He didn't need to breathe in the plug, but his lungs tried anyway. They worked out of muscle habit, but they were sluggish in the heavy liquid and entirely unnecessary, given that the LCL oxygenated his blood with or without them.

It was common that at the heart of a synch test, when his mind drifted away and he felt at once in his skin and outside of it, in the skin of a cybernetic giant, he would become faintly aware that his lungs had stilled in his chest—just another senseless motor skill lost to the meditation. He would feel them in his torso, waterlogged and cold, and in that moment experience the life of a drowned man.

Living a death and dying a life. Disconcerting didn't really cover it.

Still, he had come to crave those moments, because with the discomfort and the anxiety came the most profound part of synchronization. Those were the instants where he felt his mind sinking into the abyssal heart of the machine around him, the times where he played a game of chance, of seeing how far he could dip his persona into another, vaster mind, before running back to the light of individuality. Like a child venturing into the pitch dark of a light-less basement—dangerous, exhilarating, lonely, it was the best and worst part of Shinji Ikari's synch tests.

"Okay, we're done for the day." The voice shattered his focus, snapping him back into the present of his own body. His lungs fluttered, chugged liquid, and he was alive again. "Pilots can dismount. Thank you for your time."

Shinji felt the transfer cables disconnect from the test plug's exterior, a quiet clunk of steel snapping free. At once, the presence in his mind vanished—his link to the distant Unit 01 severed in a blink. The interior of the plug drained of energy, and the screens around him drooped in runnels like old panes of church glass, before finally fading to the sterile olive drab of deactivation.

The LCL was siphoned out next, and finally the hatch popped free. Shinji stepped out onto the deck and hurled what was left of the liquid from his system. He had done so a dozen times, but still had found no way to do it gracefully, just a lot of varied versions of doubled-over puking.

When he got to his feet, Asuka was standing before him.

"What are you planning?" she said.

Shinji rubbed his eyes, trying to clear the flash of stars that had built up at the corners of his vision. "I'm sorry?" he said.

"Hikari has been acting dodgy and awkward all week." Asuka glared at him. "If you're planning something, Third, you would be better off just telling me right now."

"What does that have to do with me?"

He watched her search his face, the stars in his vision narrowing his sight till he could see little beyond her red bangs and the blue of her eyes, and he suddenly felt very strange in a way he couldn't identify. He had no idea what he wanted to do with Asuka, but he knew it somehow involved staring at her until she told him to stop, or he died. Whichever came first.

She shoved him in the chest with two fingers. "You'd better not be planning anything."

"I'm not!" he said.

"Good."

Shinji watched her walk away. It wasn't until the testing bay door had shut behind her that he let himself inhale again. He wondered if maybe his dinner party wasn't such a good idea after all. The whole thing reeked of minefields and booby traps.

((()))

Ritsuko turned from the viewing window in the pribnow box. "What was all that about?" she asked.

The audio pickups in the testing bay had relayed the pilots' conversation directly to the observation staff, who now sat very awkwardly, categorizing data with their heads down and lips zipped. Someone coughed, slicing the air. Misato sighed.

"Shinji is planning a surprise party," she said. "It's serious. Bratwurst in the fridge and everything."

"For what occasion?"

"No occasion, just fun."

"I suppose it's only natural that he would try and get closer using what little he actually knows of her," Ritsuko said. "Bratwurst. Kind of a heavy handed gesture, don't you think?"

A retort formed in Misato's mind about over-calculating matters of the heart and dying alone surrounded by a horde of cats. Civility kept it from her mouth. "He's just trying to be a good friend," she said, instead.

"I think it's adorable," piped Lieutenant Ibuki.

"I think keep typing," said Ritsuko.

"Yes, ma'am."

Nerv's head scientist finished annotating the test results and set her datapad aside. Hands in the pockets of her lab coat, she strode over to her friend and lowered her voice. "Is this more of your hedgehog plan?" she asked.

"It's not a plan, Rits. I told you that." Misato smiled. "And, actually, this is something Shinji thought of himself. I just helped him find the food and provided the space."

"And a healthy dose of the courage, I'd wager."

"You're not wrong."

Ritsuko grinned. "And when is this auspicious occasion? Soon, I hope."

"Tomorrow, actually," Misato said. "When they're done with their after school synch tests."

((()))

School dragged on, and Shinji spent most of it keeping a secret from getting out. Of the three classmates he had invited to the party, only Hikari was a weak link. Kensuke and Toji wouldn't talk simply because they had no reason to talk to Asuka at all. Neither one was a huge fan of his co-pilot. A part of him now regretted inviting the two of them. The party was supposed to be a fun occasion for Asuka. Hindsight being what it was, Shinji doubted the wisdom of inviting a pair of boys that she absolutely loathed.

Still, there was the issue of Hikari. She was Asuka's friend, and she wasn't given to deception. Shinji considered talking to her during lunch, but while he had the capacity to understand he problem, he hadn't the courage to tackle it. In his mind, he knew Hikari as a distant friend. Inviting her to the party in the first place had been difficult enough, a task he eventually shoved off on Toji, who then shoved it off on Kensuke. The whole thing had been an exercise in middle school bureaucracy. Shinji couldn't bear to repeat any of it.

Instead he kept quiet, content to whittle away the rest of the day watching those around him from over the red rim of his budget laptop. It was a common activity for him and one that he was never wholly comfortable with, this habit of being an invisible person. The observed were always unaware of their observer. He got used to noticing the little things each person did. For instance, Tohiro Ogama, in the front row, picked and ate the fruit of his nasal. Makoto Senyaka doodled compulsively, making the same interlocking shape on every square inch of his binder. The kid next to him—whose name Shinji still didn't know, largely because the kid was too close to him—always had gum, even when he wasn't supposed to.

Yukiko Senah, sitting just near him, one row in front and two to the left, ran a hand through her hair. Shinji had watched her before, in the way that he had watched every girl in room 2-A—with a mixture of fear, excitement, and confused longing. Though now, he found he wasn't watching her as often, and those emotions had fairly fled him as a result. In fact, he wasn't watching any of them as much as he normally did.

Most of his time was spent looking at Asuka. She sat directly in front of him, separated by five empty desks, like empty vertebrae along the classroom's spine. She stuck out in the class, if only because she hadn't the ingrained "feet flat, head forward" training of her Japanese peers. She sat askance, one leg folded over the other, both jutting out into the aisle. Her foot tapped as she typed, the laptop balanced on her crossed leg. She shook her head and threw a lock of red hair over her shoulder from where it had fallen out of place. Shinji watched her hair fall, and his mind failed to remember what her hair smelled like, only that it was incredible, and he would do anything to get that moment back.

He wondered if she felt the same way. He wondered if cooking bratwurst was a good idea, and if a surprise party was asking for a beating. He wondered what it was like to kiss a girl, what it was like to kiss Asuka. He wondered if these kinds of wonderings made him a shitty friend or not, and he wished he had the gumption to tell her about them.

Asuka itched her leg. Her hand caught the hem of her skirt, peeling it back, and for a moment Shinji saw more thigh than he could ever want. The sight sent his eyes scurrying elsewhere, anywhere. His head turned in the way heads turn to retroactively make a look a glance, and his vision swiveled right into a pair of red pupils.

Rei Ayanami wasn't a girl given to furtive glances. She wasn't given to furtive anythings, so far as Shinji could imagine. When she did something, she did it fully and without subtlety. When she looked at someone, she stared.

Shinji knew of only three occasions where the First had looked him directly in the eye, and none were casual encounters. In one, she was naked and he didn't want to think about it. The second was later that same day, and she slapped him directly afterwards. The third had been in the aftermath of Operation: Yashima, and in that worst of moments, the girl had smiled.

Now she was staring at him again, and like every other time, Shinji had no idea why. He looked back for a long moment. She had no emotion on her pale face. No rage, no surprise, no sadness. It was the Rei Look, that expression of silent curiosity. Looking at her, Shinji realized that he wasn't half the invisible person that his co-pilot was. Eventually he blinked, and looked back to his laptop, trying to ignore the eyes boring into the back of his head.

((()))

The after school synch test became a citywide blackout and an Angel attack, which devolved into a highly unsanitary adventure through the geofront's emergency access tunnels. Twenty-four hours after talking to Shinji in the testing bay, Asuka found herself guiding a gargantuan war machine up a lift shaft meant to ferry buildings. An hour after that she stood in the locker room shower, lit only by an upturned flashlight as she let scalding hot water run down her back.

It hurt, and she bit her knuckle, fighting back tears. She gritted her teeth and waited for her nerves to deaden, just so that she wouldn't have to feel the sizzling acid that yet still seemed drizzle down her spine.

"Damnit." Her voice was but a husk, stolen by the steam. "Damnit, damnit, damnit!"

"Asuka?" The sound came from nowhere, its entrance hidden by the hammer-roar of the water.

"What?" she said, failing to keep the tremble from her voice.

"It's Misato." Asuka heard dress shoes on the tile floor as her guardian came to a stop just beyond the curtain. "You okay?"

"Yes."

"You've been in there for twenty minutes."

"I'm fine, thank you." Asuka reached back and turned off the water. The burning went away. She reached out through the curtain with an open hand. "Towel," she said.

Misato proffered one. "I'm worried, Asuka."

"That's nice." One wipe of the towel turned cotton into sandpaper, and lit her back on fire. Tears welled and her mouth opened in a yelp kept silent by pride. She quickly learned to daub, soaking the moisture away in small increments. When she was done and her tears had been wiped away, she threw open the curtain and stepped out, towel around her neck, affecting every inch the confident pilot.

"Worried about what?" she asked.

Misato grabbed her by the shoulder as she passed. "What the hell did you do in there?"

"Nothing." Asuka shook off the hand and walked to her locker. "I'm fine."

"Asuka, your back is peeling!"

"I'm fine."

Misato was quiet for a minute. When Asuka had fully dressed, she finally spoke again. "How can I help you?" she said.

Asuka extended a finger and pushed her locker door shut, then pushed it further until it locked. The click sounded around the darkened room like a suppressed gunshot.

"You want to help," she said. When Misato didn't respond, she went on. "Help like how? Help like I actually need help, like I'm some broken doll that needs to get wound back up?"

"Asuka—"

"No. Help like how? Help like push Shinji and me together? As if I could ever benefit from getting closer to that animated turnip? I can't, and I won't." Asuka grinned, and the low lighting turned it into a sneer. "But that would make you feel better, wouldn't it? Because this whole thing is just you trying to sleep better at night."

Captain Katsuragi frowned at her pilot. "You're wrong," she said.

Asuka's grin faltered. She had expected a fight, not this. "What does that mean?"

The Captain didn't offer an explanation. Instead, she simply walked from the locker room, her heels clicking her to the powerless, open door, and then down the corridor beyond. In a moment the sound had faded away into the blackened facility, taking the rest of the Second Child's victorious grin with it.

((()))

The blackout had killed the fridge, and with it the bratwurst. Shinji pulled it out and looked at the contents, soggy and melted in their plastic-wrapped container. He frowned, rationalizing that it didn't really matter, anyway. It was eight o'clock by the time he got home, and the Angel attack had fairly cancelled the dinner for him. He imagined that even Mr. Suzuhara, famed for his laxity, would keep Toji indoors on the evening of the day Tokyo-3 stood still.

Shinji tossed the ruined container in the sink, where it could thaw completely before he threw it out. He heard the front door open.

"Misato?" he called.

"Nope." Asuka walked into the kitchen, hands in the pockets of her sweater. "Disappointed, Third?"

"Thought you were Misato."

"Obviously." She walked over to where he was standing and looked into the sink. "Nothing planned, huh?"

"This wasn't—"

"Stop lying," she said. "Hikari told me all about your little dinner party."

"Sorry," he said. "It was a dumb idea anyway."

He turned to walk away, and as Asuka watched him, she came to a conclusion. It wasn't brought on by the events of the day—not the Angel fight or the words she'd had with Misato. And it certainly wasn't a sudden revelatory burst of love. It a pang of regret that punched her in the chest when she saw him turn away, a feeling that unexpectedly hurt more than any phantom acid burn or spurned guardian's receding footsteps.

She cleared her throat. "I really ought to thank you."

Shinji turned. "Huh?"

"Well, kind of. I mean, you didn't intend to, but you almost threw a party commemorating my greatest victory."

"You mean the battle today?"

"No, the math quiz. Of course! Leading a three-Evangelion sortie against the ninth Angel, defeating it through adverse combat conditions and a serious disadvantage?" Asuka pulled a chair to the counter and stood on it, so she could reach to the top of the cabinets. "I'd call that an impressive victory, well worth commemorating."

"What are you doing?" Shinji said.

"Helping you throw your stupid victory party, idiot." Asuka grabbed a bottle of wine from where Misato had tucked it away the week prior, and jumped down from her chair. She held it up. "Ta-da."

"Asuka, we're not old enough to drink."

"Grab glasses. Misato and I drank some about a week ago. It's fine."

"Asuka—"

"Shinji," she said, "shut up and grab glasses."

Shinji shut up and grabbed glasses, unaware of how important the next hour of his life would prove to be.


	4. Chapter 4

She was about half a glass into the wine, with Shinji lagging a little behind. Not that it mattered much. Their bodies were far from ready for it. Asuka compensated for the swim in her vision and the time-delay in her movements as best she could. It had almost become a game. Her words were clear, and she enunciated with care. The last thing she wanted was to slur in front of this kid.

She wasn't sure what kind of drunk she was. She had heard of different kinds—angry, sobby, friendly, touchy—from her time with Kaji, and she had seen Misato's drunk side more than once. But she was anxious to learn what kind she would be. So far she had only felt the physical effects, which was disappointing.

She watched Shinji as he sat, hands in his lap, looking at the glass in front of him. He almost didn't seem to be awake. She wondered what kind of drunk he would be, and what actually constituted being drunk, anyway. How much did she have to drink to be drunk? Was it the whole bottle, or would that kill her? Drunk sounded past-tense, anyway. Was being drunk something you only realized afterwards, when you looked back on yourself? Did that make sense?

Shinji spoke. "It's just so messed up."

Asuka blinked. She hadn't expected him to say anything. "What?"

"This whole city. Everyone goes to work and goes to school like everything is normal, and they ignore the cannons in the buildings and the monsters that try to kill them." He looked at her. "That's why they try to pretend that we aren't pilots. We go to school like normal kids. And everyone in the school knows who we are and what we do, but none of them bring it up."

Asuka shrugged. "Who cares what they think?"

"Or maybe they're afraid." Shinji looked at her, the candlelight casting his eyes in a wavering half shadow.

She started laughing, which earned a glare from him.

"What's so funny?"

She smiled. "You're a mopey drunk."

"I'm not drunk!"

"You are too!" Asuka smiled. "It's okay. Misato is drunk all the time."

"Not _all_ the time," he said.

"Okay, but a lot of the time." Asuka leaned and stretched across the back of the chair, so that the bottom of her sweater nudged up and exposed her bare stomach. Shinji stared at it, a fact that Asuka knew only because she watched him to it, which was of course the whole point of doing it.

"Whatcha looking at?" she said.

"Nothing." He looked down, at his glass.

She grinned. "I'm gonna go sit on the veranda," she said.

"What for? It's still dark out."

"Exactly, stupid. Don't you want to see what the city looks like when it's all dark?" Asuka stood up from the table and realized that her legs weren't as functional as she thought they were. She stabilized and grabbed her glass, incorrectly believing herself to be graceful. "No electricity, no noise, no nonsense. You coming or not?"

"I guess so."

"Bring the bottle."

((()))

He found her in the darkness of her office, lit only by her hand lamp. She had retreated there halfway through the cleanup, mostly because there wasn't much left for her to do except wait for the guys in maintenance to get the power back on, and she was too tired to keep up the appearance of in-control operations manager.

He knocked on the open door. "Katsuragi?"

Misato looked over to see him, but a three-foot stack of paperwork blocked her line of sight. It was an all too common feature of her workspace. "Yeah?" she called.

"It's me," he said, knowing that she knew his voice.

"And what do you want?"

Ryoji Kaji entered and pushed aside some of the mountain of paper, clearing a space for himself on the desk. "Just wanted to drop by and see how you were doing."

Misato laughed. "Great timing. Shouldn't the Chief Inspector be out inspecting how this happened?"

"It is strange," he said, as if the city wide blackout in the most secure fortress complex on Earth was something as banal as a dead phone signal. "For all of those backups to fail at once. Kind of makes you wonder."

Misato stared at him. "You are the most frustrating man."

"Am I?" Kaji smiled, shrugged, and she wanted to hit him and kiss him in the same instant. "I apologize."

"You damn well better."

"Actually, I need your help with something."

"Well, there's a first time for everything." Misato crossed her arms. "What is it? And if you say a sex thing, I'm shooting you."

"You would do that?"

"Oh, yeah. They gave me a gun for this job."

"I'm shocked."

"Yeah, it's this whole thing. What do you need?"

"I'm worried about Asuka," he said. "She's stopped by my office nearly every day since we've arrived in Japan, and on the days she doesn't, I usually get a phone call."

"So she has a crush. It's normal enough, and it's not like everyone hasn't already noticed it."

"That's just it. A week went by without so much as a peep out of her. Then the other day she finds me in the break room."

Misato grinned. "Really, if there is anything about sex in this—"

"There isn't."

"Fine. Go on."

He smiled at her in a way that was not a smirk, the way he used to smile in a lifetime long since turned to dust. It made her wonder if she could engender that kind of unguarded smile in another person ever again. The contemplation of it writhed in her chest, and she hated having thought about it, even briefly.

"All that was on her mind was our little boy savior," Kaji said. "She wouldn't shut up about him."

"What did she say?"

"Only how irritating he is, and how sad it is that he needs her help."

"I'm not hearing a question."

"Very well." Kaji spread his arms. "My question to you, oh wonderful Operations Manager Captain Misato Katsuragi, is what have you been doing to those poor children?"

"What do you mean what have I—" Misato caught herself before the rant could really build momentum, and stared at him for a moment. Revelations came to her. "You talked to Ritsuko," she said.

"Ah. Yes. Maybe."

"That woman. Confidentiality means nothing to her. I really shouldn't be surprised." She huffed back into her chair. "So what did she say? She called me an alcoholic puppet master?"

"That's descriptive, but no."

"What, then?"

"She mentioned you had been nudging the kids into a little relationship." He paused. "And something about hedgehogs. I admit I had tuned out by that point."

"Always with the hedgehogs," Misato said.

"It's a strange metaphor."

"She's married to it." Misato sighed. "All I am trying to do is get them to be friends. They should be friends, they both need a friend, and it is silly that they are not friends. Does that make sense?"

"It makes perfect sense," Kaji said, like he didn't really mean it. "You want my opinion on it?"

"I feel like I'm getting it either way. Are you going to tell me I'm playing with fire?"

Kaji shook his head. "No. I think you're putting a cobra and a mouse in the same cage."

"Now that is a strange metaphor." Misato sat forward. "So you think Asuka will rip our little mouse to shreds, huh?"

"Not quite." Kaji lit a cigarette, then offered the pack to Misato. She shook her head, and he went on. "The biggest challenge for those two is the same challenge that every man and woman has faced since the beginning of time. Just understanding the opposite sex is hard enough when you're an adult, and all the pain and trouble of your life has settled to granite in your soul. But it's tougher for them, because they are so young, but stuck in a very adult situation. Any relationship they have is going to be framed in such a way that it outstrips their respective age, and that's dangerous. Because at fourteen, with all your traumas still bubbling on the surface? Relating to anyone is a pain in the ass."

"Uh-huh. Tell me something I don't know, Mr. Introspection."

"Fine." Kaji narrowed his eyes. "Asuka isn't the cobra. She's a mouse, and in no way is she prepared for the darkness that her love can unleash in that kid's heart."

((()))

The city was dead, the buildings set like tombstones silhouetted by moonlight, and the children watched it from their chairs on the side of the building. The veranda at the Katsuragi residence was rarely used, possibly because it was the only veranda with furniture on it in the entire building, and the isolation of that distinction played into discouraging its use. But with the city's power gone, the isolation didn't seem half as potent.

"I think it's over there," Shinji said, pointing into the city. He laid in one of the veranda's two deck chairs, each alongside a small table. The umbrella for the table was gone—he had no idea if it had ever existed, actually—so that he could see the stars above them.

"Wrong again." Asuka sipped her drink. She had yet to look at the stars.

The Third Child squinted through his intoxication and the darkness. "There, then." He pointed again, at a space between two distant towers.

"Wrong _again_! Do you even look at the ordnance displacement heat maps?"

"I do. Of course I do."

"Then how come you can't point out a single rifle drop for me?"

"I don't know. It's dark."

Asuka smirked. "I could tell you six of them, right now."

"Of course you could," he said.

She sat up. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Nothing! You've just been doing it longer."

"So what?"

"So," Shinji said, "you're better at this than I am. I'm not good with ordinance heat or whatever. You are."

"Well, obviously. But you can learn." Asuka leaned back and smiled. "Where do you think missile tower seven is?"

Shinji pointed. "That one with the blinking red thing?"

"Idiot. It's not even up here. Explicitly defensive buildings are on subterranean rotation until a first level alert."

"But we had an alert earlier today. Why wouldn't they—oh, the blackout."

"And now we've all learned something, children." Asuka made bowing motion with her hands, even though she was lying down. Her second glass was getting towards empty, and she wasn't certain she wanted another. The light swimming in her head had escalated in the past while.

"Asuka, can I ask you a question?"

"Maybe."

Silence.

"Yes, Shinji."

"Why are you a pilot?"

Asuka snorted. "Because I'm the best at it."

"But what if you weren't?"

"What do you mean?" She turned her head to look at him, and saw that he wasn't looking back at her. His eyes were on the city in front of them. It became clear to her that he wasn't asking to learn her reason, but to search for one of his own. Another example of idiot Shinji always needing help.

"I guess I would keep doing it," she said. "After all, no one else can do it. I'd have an obligation."

He was silent. She watched him and lived in the languid world of her alcohol-dulled senses. "Shinji," she said, after a moment. "Do you like me?"

The words hit like a bucket of water. Shinji shot up in his seat, a little too quickly. Blood rushed through his head and he wobbled in place. "What does that mean?" he asked.

Asuka didn't move much at all. She lay with her cheek pressed against the armrest of the deck chair and looked at him. "Not like that. Like a friend."

"Uh, sure."

Her brow frowned above her smooshed cheek. "Sure sounds like maybe, and maybe sucks."

"I'm sorry!"

"Sorry sucks, too. Now do you like me or not?"

"Of course I like you."

Asuka smiled again. "Of course," she said. "I am likable."

Shinji finished his glass and set it on the table. He kept his eyes on the silhouette show beyond the veranda rail, and far away from her. His voice was quiet. "Do you like me?"

His fellow pilot hummed. "Dunno," she said.

"Don't know," Shinji repeated. He stood up, grabbing his glass and the bottle. "I'm going inside."

"Who said you could take that?"

"I think we've had enough." He walked around the table and grabbed her glass. She watched him, and got up as well.

"Hey," she said.

Shinji opened his mouth to respond, but he never got the chance. Asuka's lips were in the way, pressing into his, so that excuses and explanations died in their throats and nothing was left but the moment. It drew out, and his sagging senses felt nothing beyond the wheat-ruffle touch of her fingers in his hair, and the wet, copper tang of her tongue in his mouth.

After a time measured in held breaths, Asuka pulled away. One hand fell away to her side. The other was still against his face, and he didn't dare move away from it.

"Asuka—"

Her hand went away. "You said you were going to bed?" she asked.

"Uh," he said, stammering for a response. "Yeah, I am. Was. I was said I am going to bed."

"Such a strange little boy." She shook her head and walked away, back inside toward her room. "Good night!"

Shinji Ikari was left on the veranda with a sense of bewilderment and a purposeless erection. He stood there a long time, unsure what to do or if he was still in the right dimension. Then there was a bang of transformers firing and the tombstone city lit with a flash behind him, casting his stark shadow against the sliding glass doors. Something in the kitchen beeped as it came back online, and the light from the living room washed across him. Jerked from his reverie, Shinji walked back inside the apartment.


	5. Interlude I

Something else's blood fills your lungs and for a minute you feel like you're drowning. That little reptilian part at the back of your brain wants out, wants to swim up, but before you know it you aren't drowning anymore. You can breathe and open your eyes, and even though you feel the blood around you, it seems like it isn't there anymore.

They ask if you're ready. You look at your feet in the stirrups, wrapped in the bulky brown test suit. You don't think you'll ever be ready, and you say as much. His voice comes back to you, tinny through the plug's speakers that haven't even been wired correctly yet. He tells you that it is okay in that way that always means he didn't understand the joke.

You know it'll be okay. This time is different. A completely different Unit. Not like what happened to Ikari, the poor woman. That was a test type. Something went wrong, but you figured it out. This is a production type. You figured it out. It'll be fine.

Turn it on, you tell them.

There is no ceremony, no build-up of energy or slow whine. Just the flick of a switch and suddenly there are colors everywhere and you aren't just you anymore. You're in two heads at once. One of them is you, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, scientist, wife, and mother of one beautiful daughter. The other is a blood-forged monster, lashed inside an armored prison and shot through with cybernetics—wrath incarnate, caged by man. You feel that slumbering, bestial intellect at the base of your mind, and suddenly the blood you're swimming in goes away and you can see out, through the eyes of that monster and into the world around it. You see the restraints and the walls of the test cage and the control room behind its armored glass. You see him at a desk, all your comrades and peers whose work led to this moment, and realize that you could crush them all into paste if you wanted to.

You swallow that tantalizing, disturbing impulse. Focus. Control it. Nothing is wrong.

It worked.

But the voices disagree. You can hear them through the speakers, shouting and yelling and confused. The psycho graph has inverted. Id manifestation in progress. Physical construct deteriorating. Dissolution is eminent.

You laugh, but you feel nervous. You try to get their attention. You speak but no one seems to hear you. You try to tell them you're fine, that they need to reboot the system, that the activation simply fried the preferences. That they never accounted for what neural feedback would do to the monitoring algorithms. That's all.

But they don't respond. They can't seem to hear you. You see your husband grab a headset and speak, saying your name, telling you to focus. You open your mouth to tell him that you are focused. Everything is fine.

And then you realize that you aren't alone in the plug.

She is sitting next to you in her brown test suit and uplink visor, and even though you can't see her eyes, you've been in front of enough mirrors in your life to know your reflection. She is you. You know that in a heartbeat. You're looking at yourself, which means that the worst thing has happened. Worse than Ikari. Worse than the prototype.

You've been split. You wonder which part you are, which parts got put into you. You know you aren't the physical part—the physical part is sitting next to you, crying and laughing, spittle from her rictus grin mixing into the blood water.

So you're the sane part. Wonderful.

You try to explain how to fix this, but no dice. They still can't hear you. You reach out to your other self, but you can't reconnect with it. She, you, is still crying. But you can fix this. You're the sane one.

Something deep in your mind, in that shared part of the consciousness that you're still getting used to, rumbles. The monster is awake, and you're in its mind with it, with no physical shell to hide within. It feels out for you, the claws of its conscious mind wrapping around your soul. You tell yourself it is just a copy of a dead god, a flawed attempt at playing creator.

You fight back, and then the monster squeezes and makes you realize that even the corpse of a god is still stronger than a living mortal. It squeezes you into itself, and the last thought you have before you can never again discern between you, it, and them is of the only thing that ever really mattered to you.

Asuka.


	6. Chapter 6

Shinji frowned. Physics was his least favorite subject at school, and it only got worse at home. At least in school he could avoid doing the work in his textbook through a bag of myriad middle school tricks. But at home there was no pencil to get up and sharpen every ten minutes, and no way to doodle without feeling guilty. So he was left with a problem about the velocity of an apple thrown from a plane as expressed in way too many parentheses.

The front door slid open, followed by the sound of dress shoes clicking on tile. A second later, Misato entered the kitchen.

"Good afternoon," Shinji said.

Misato grunted in the affirmative. She dropped her purse on the counter and reached up to the top of the shelves. "Where did my wine go?" she said.

Shinji looked up from his homework. "I'm sorry?"

Misato looked at him. "See this empty bottle and how it was stashed away back on the shelf? If you drank the stuff, why did you put the empty bottle back where I could find it?"

"I didn't—"

"Kiddo, I'm not angry. You don't have to lie." She set the bottle on the table. "Throw that away when you get a chance."

Shinji decided that he had a chance that moment and took care of it immediately. When he sat back down, Misato was across from him, a can of beer in her hand. She drank in quiet for a minute, watching her charge as he worked out a physics problem with a lot of frowning and calculator tapping. It was clear that he needed time to concentrate, and that talking to him wouldn't help a thing. But thinking strategically was something she only did for money, and her shift had ended an hour ago.

"So speaking of this wine," she started. "I'm guessing you didn't drink it alone."

In an effort to keep from incriminating himself, Shinji stayed quiet. Misato drank her beer and smirked, a tremendous idea developing in her mind.

"Pleading the fifth, eh?" She leaned down and picked something up. "Well, I've got the perfect cross examiner."

PenPen was plopped on the tabletop, his butt making a squishy noise as he landed. His large eyes looked terribly confused.

"Misato, what are you—"

"Lieutenant PenPen here has been on the force for twenty years. He's a veteran psy-officer, and doesn't need you to talk to tell what you've been up to." Misato set her hand on the warm water bird's backpack unit and closed her eyes, very theatrically. "Now don't break eye contact with him, Lieutenant. We need this kid's mind read."

PenPen blinked. Shinji chuckled.

"Silence, perp." Misato made dramatic grunting noises. "Oh, yes, I see now, Lieutenant. This young man has been up to the devil's work."

"What?" Shinji started.

"Yes, Lieutenant, I can see it, too."

"What?" Shinji repeated.

Misato's eyes snapped open. "Don't you lie to me, Shinji Ikari. You turned this apartment into a den of sin and debauchery!"

"What? No!"

"Yes you did!" Misato shook her penguin at him. "El Tee PenPen is no liar! You made love to Asuka, and out of wedlock, no less! Have you no shame?"

"No way!" Shinji turned white, which of course had been the whole point of the thing. "How could you even joke about something like that?"

Misato laughed and set PenPen down. He glared at her, feeling betrayed, and hopped down off the table. A second later he was gone, having disappeared back into his refrigerated quarters.

"I'm sorry, kiddo. Your face was priceless." Misato settled down. "I really shouldn't have done that."

"It wasn't very funny." Shinji was wearing his disappointed face. It was the face he wore when Misato dumped all their clothes into one wash load, or left all the dishes piled in the sink for a weekend. Its effectiveness, in Misato's opinion, was completely neutered by how adorable it was.

"You did kiss her," she said.

Somehow, Shinji became whiter. "She told you?" he said.

"Nope. The both of you have been avoiding one another for the last two days. I figured something happened." She winked at him. "Thanks for confirming it, though."

"Uh-huh."

"Do you need to talk about it?"

Shinji shrugged, and tried to go back to his physics. "Nothing to talk about."

"Nothing to talk about?" Misato downed the rest of her beer and hurled it across the room, where it bounced off the rim of the trashcan and fell to the tile. She didn't care, at least not while there was a child's fragile heart on the line. "It was your first kiss. That's all kinds of important."

"Not really."

"Shinji, it's important. What happened?"

The Third Child realized he wasn't going to get his physics homework done, but he didn't push it aside. Instead he just feigned working on it as he spoke, so that he wouldn't have to face the discussion fully. Misato, for her part, pretended not to notice.

"I kissed her on the balcony."

"She kissed you or you kissed her? There's a very important difference there."

"She kissed me, I guess."

"Yes!" Misato clapped her hands on the table. "Then what happened?"

"She asked me if I was going to bed, and I told her I was, and then she said good night and walked away."

"What did you do?"

Masturbated furiously. "Just cleaned up and went to bed," he said. "Why would she do that?"

"I don't know." Misato leaned back in her chair and looked at him. "Have you asked her yet?"

"Of course not!"

"You say that like you shouldn't ask her. Why not? She was half of the kiss, and she started it." Misato stood up, grabbed her purse, and pulled another beer out of the fridge. "Just ask yourself: if you want to know why she did it, isn't she the right person to ask?"

"I guess," Shinji said.

The front door slid open again, followed by the sound of grumbling in German. Misato smiled at her young ward. "Here's your chance!"

"I don't think that I should—"

Misato cut him off. "Asuka?"

"Yeah." The Second walked into the kitchen and shrugged her backpack onto the floor, where it would be picked up later by someone who was not Asuka. She looked between her roommates, at the grin on her guardian and the fear in her co-pilot, and realized that something was wrong. "What's up?"

"Well," Misato said, walking out of the room, "I have to do a lot of super important crucial paperwork, and Shinji wants to know why you kissed him! Buh-bye."

The door slid shut, and Shinji buried his beat-red face in his physics book. Asuka's grumbling returned, low and guttural in a language he couldn't understand. Shinji did his best to ignore it, and was succeeding until a slender hand reached into his field of vision and slammed his book shut. He looked up at her.

"Hey!"

"Don't hey me. That assignment is a day late anyway." She shoved him in the side of the head. "Have you been talking about our little incident, Third?"

Shinji pushed her hand away. "She guessed! What was I supposed to do? I don't know how to handle it when a girl likes me."

"What the hell does that mean!?" Asuka shouted, and Shinji realized that his slip of the tongue was about to cost him. "What, us having some wine and me making a mistake means have to like you or something? I mean, I know you're an idiot, but this is a completely new level of narcissism!"

"Asuka—"

"And why in the hell would I like a child like you, anyway? I can think of ten real men off the top of my head that I'd rather date than you. I'd rather _die_ than date you!"

"Asuka I don't—"

"And where does she get off talking about something between us?" Asuka pointed at the closed door to the living room, through which Misato had escaped. "That's not her place! And she was smirking! What, like something's wrong with me if I did like a boy? What do I have to do to get some sympathy around here?"

When he didn't try to interject, she whipped around and glared at him. "What? Cat got your tongue, Shinji?"

"You like me," he said. It was more of a realization expressed externally than the accusation that Asuka took it for.

"Where did you get that idea?"

Shinji smiled, not knowing why or what else to do. "I like you too, Asuka."

His co-pilot stared at him, eyes narrow. Her mouth opened as she tried to think of something to say. She eventually settled on shouting "Shut the hell up!" before storming off to her room.

Shinji waited until he heard her door shut. Then he waited to make sure no one else was coming in through the front door. Finally, when the kitchen was quiet and everything was secure, he opened his physics book up again, and returned to the suddenly-less-stressful world of velocity and airplanes.


	7. Chapter 7

They stood as statues in the low sun, cutting titanic silhouettes against the skyline while the morning fog peeled down from the mountains to suffuse their legs in an opaque shroud. Positioned at far-flung points they waited, powered but sill, a trio of silent guardians, each at its own end of the city. As the eyes of a nation were on them, so were the children's eyes on the sky, and the threat that approached from beyond the wispy clouds.

((()))

Twenty hours before he caught a falling god with his hands, the Third Child stood at the door to a dilapidated apartment, his school bag over his shoulders while his finger hovered over the pin-pon doorbell. He tried to gather his nerves to press the button, but instinct and latent embarrassment from the last time he had stood here stayed his hand.

It didn't help that he wasn't sure why he had come. He lowered his hand and stood listening to his surroundings. There was a dull, rhythmic bang to all the acoustics, so that a cat's shriek in the distance became, through the process of moving down the echoing, unadorned concrete corridors, indistinguishable from the rumble of a garbage truck somewhere beyond the complex's walls. Like a number of places in Tokyo-3, the district around him was nearly devoid of people, a by-product of over-planning and redundancies in construction to accommodate a population that just wasn't there. The Katsuragi residence was another example—the only inhabited apartment in an entire building.

At least that place felt warm in spite of the emptiness. This place seemed consumed by it, as if the disregard for comfort or humanity had seeped into the very concrete and rebar. He felt it, the deafening pressure of a silent room, pressing in on him. It was that more than any real guts that caused him to reach again for the doorbell.

The door swished aside before he could press it, and he was suddenly face to face with a pair of red eyes.

"Pilot Ikari."

Shinji blinked in surprise, and his hand dropped to his side out of embarrassment. "Hey, Rei."

She stared at him, waiting. He looked past her, down the short hall and into the one room of her plain domicile. He saw her teal school dress lying on the floor. Then he noticed that, beyond the immediacy of her red eyes, she was just wearing her white blouse and black under-skirt. A part of him understood that she had just gotten home from school a moment ago, and that it was logical she was undressing. That part also understood that a shirt and skirt was far from naked. The rest of him—the very Japanese part of him—decided that "closer to naked" was close enough to feel ashamed.

"I'm sorry to intrude and all," he started, but his words died in her eyes as she held his stare.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

Shinji searched for an explanation. When that failed him, he went with the truth. "I don't know. I just need to talk to someone."

She stared at him a moment. If at the end of that moment she had shut the door in his face, pushed past him and walked away, or informed him that the sky was orange, he would have accepted it. In truth, he never knew what his fellow pilot was going to do from one moment to the next, and that unknowability scared him.

The moment passed, and Rei walked back into her apartment, the door ajar. It was the closest thing to an invitation that he was likely to get, and he took it, following her in. He passed her small kitchenette, and saw that the faucet of her sink had developed a rime of rust. He wondered if it had ever been used.

"You had a question."

"What?" he said, looking back to her. She sat on her bed, feet flat on the floor, hands in her lap.

"You had a question." Her voice was soft, but her meaning was never lost for it. He found that she had a way of lowering the volume of the room around her when she spoke. People naturally quieted around her. "What is it?"

"I saw you looking at me in class the other day." Shinji moved closer, but he stayed in the entry foyer, not comfortable enough to walk into her bedroom. "And I wondered if you… if you maybe knew what I was thinking."

"I don't understand."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry." She stared at him, and he continued. "Do you remember when we talked a long time ago, about piloting the Eva? I asked you why you pilot, and you told me it was a bond."

"Yes."

He rolled his shoulders, trying to shrug out of asking something so personal of this girl he knew so incompletely. "I was wondering what you mean by that. You said it was a bond with all people. How can you feel that?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I don't know, Rei. I just don't know what I'm doing here anymore. You and Asuka, you both know what you're doing. I'm not cut out for this."

Rei nodded, though if it was in understanding or agreement, Shinji did not know.

"I don't know how I feel it." She looked at her hands, pale against the black of her skirt. "I know I am bonded to the Evangelion. I can feel it with me always. I know you do, too. You can feel it right now, pilot Ikari."

Shinji's gut tightened, and with that sensation came the feeling of pain in his arm, a phantom break from months ago, when his first sortie saw his forearm snapped like a twig. He felt it along with the pressure of a volcano, the shock of two lightning-bright whips impaling his torso, and the teeth of an undersea leviathan. All those pains thought gone to him flared up in the face of her words. It was a wonder he managed to speak.

"Is that the bond you mean?" he asked.

Rei shook her head. "No. That is one bond, the bond that makes you an Evangelion pilot. It is your place. The bond you asked about is not a thing you can touch or feel. It is a reason to go on."

"To go on piloting, you mean," he said, though he knew she had meant something more. Rei was talking about a reason for living.

"It is everything." She looked at him. "When you find it, you will know."

"What if I don't find it? What if it doesn't exist for me?"

"I do not know," she said.

Shinji forced a smile. "I hope I never find out." He turned to leave, but stopped before he reached the door. "Hey, Rei? Thank you for your help."

Rei Ayanami blinked. "You're welcome," she said, and then the door swished shut behind him.

((()))

"Target is still inbound! ETA to contact is thirty seconds!"

"All Units still on intercept vectors! Unit 01 is closest!"

His feet churned the forest into mulch as he ran the last three miles to the summit. It occurred to him that he didn't know the mountain's name, which gave way to a series of revelations of things he did not know. He did not know why the Angel above him—six hundred feet and closing fast—wanted to self-destruct all over this city. He did not know why he could feel its proximity like a whisper against his flesh. He did not know why only he could do this job, and he had no idea if his father cared for him—if anyone cared for him, for that matter.

What he did know was the task required of him and what was at stake should he fail, and because he was a hero, that was all he needed.

Shinji Ikari crashed into position at the top of the mountain, spread his legs and set himself against the terror of an onrushing god.

"AT Field," he shouted, "max power!"

A pane of force unfurled from his soul. It was a beautiful thing, something he felt as another sense entirely. For a moment all was silent. Then a grating explosion cut the air and crashed into the hilltop. The collision discharged a wave of heat that flash-incinerated everything atop the mountain, bleaching the summit to the bedrock. The panes of force overhead scraped each other, and Shinji could feel the impact against his mind—a sensation somewhere between smelling and crying. He tasted blood in his throat and felt doubt slither as worms beneath the fabric of his plugsuit.

It was details like that—the elements of unreality that happened in these insane moments—that he never shared with the others, partly because he only remembered them in the aftermath as a waking man remembers the tatters of a nightmare, but mostly because even if he could remember them, he wouldn't be able to explain any of it.

The Angel pushed, harder than before, and Shinji pushed back, flexing through the pain in his legs and the ache in his mind. His feet sank into the bare earth beneath him, cracking through bedrock that, in the downdraft of the crushing tumult, had turned to soppy sand. Stability went away, but he recovered. The Angel's advance, measured in micrometers, halted.

The panes slipped against one another, emitting another ear-splitting whine. Shinji felt the monster's field expand, groping at the edges of his own like fingers grasping through the crack of a doorframe, and realized he couldn't match its expansion. He would spread himself too thin to hold the creature at bay. It would break through. People would die.

Shinji Ikari screamed. He might have said something in the scream, but he wasn't sure. He screamed from absolute frustration—that he couldn't hold it, that he might fail, but most of all that no one would help him.

And then she was there, a crimson titan at his side, her hands outstretched, adding her field to the cacophony. The Angel rose up, punched back by her sudden arrival. Shinji heard her over the comm, grunting but grinning. A wolf on the attack.

"I'm here," she said. "Targeting the core! Keep hold of this swinehunt!"

Unit 02's hand went to its shoulder pylon. Asuka felt the hilt of a knife six times her height slip into the palm of her hand and drew it. The progressive blade slipped free and ignited. Its power was hot and intoxicatingly physical, a totem of reality in the whipping madness around her. She found it reassuring that after all the careful planning, the hopes and dreams, the despair, and the energy of two souls colliding had done their jobs, it still came down to a hand and a knife to save the world.

"Asuka!" he shouted. "Hurry!"

She didn't need his permission or instruction. He could pump his synch score as high as he wanted. She would never need his help to kill one of these things. Her feet left the ground and she launched up, slipping between her comrade Units with a deft calculation, their shoulders missing each other by scant feet. Her blade caught on a solid field, bit deep, and sliced it aside. Not enough for a kill stroke, but enough to get her fingers through and hold it open. She brought her arm back, a piston of a thousand fiber bundles, and drove it forward through the gap.

Asuka Soryu stabbed the eye of a god. She felt the shock in her arm and heard its screams in her mind—brief and intense, the death rattle of an infant played via symphony—and she lost her grin entirely.

Unit 02 fell back to earth, and stood as the fresh corpse of its kill fell across her like a wool blanket. Asuka barely felt the ensuing explosion.

((()))

Fourteen hours before she killed the Angel, Asuka stood naked in the bathroom at night, judging her reflection. She didn't look at her body. That didn't need judging. The things that needed evaluation were her face and eyes. She needed to see what she looked like when she told a lie, because this had to look convincing.

"I don't like you," she said. Simple. Too simple. Easy to analyze, easy to crack. It had to be more convincing, and that meant more length. Again.

"Let's just get one thing clear, you animated turnip: I've never liked you. You're a snobby little kiss-up and a crappy pilot. I can't stand to look at you, much less like you. The whole idea is insane!"

Too defensive. Again.

"If I liked someone I would like a real man. Like Kaji! Kaji's a man. He carries a gun and shaves. You're just a kid."

Too deflective. Why talk about Kaji? Again.

"You suck, Third," she said, then repeated a dozen times, trying different inflections until she got fed up with the whole thing and sat down on the edge of the bathtub. She rubbed her face with her hands, listening to the sound of the rest of her shower water drip-dripping out of the faucet as she tried to pin her emotional discomfort on the boy who had done nothing but speak truth.

" _I like you too, Asuka,"_ he had said, and she hated him for it. She hated the assumption inherent in it that she liked him in the first place, but mostly she hated that it put the response on her. He liked her, he thought she liked him, and now she was forced to deal with that.

She dealt with the issue as best she could every night, tossing it around in her head, fixating on the parts of him that didn't completely suck. She thought about how he made food and how he walked home with her every day. She thought about the weird stuff, too, like how he tried to kiss her when she was sleeping. That one had bothered her at first, but now she had no trouble thinking about it. If one of the other stooges had tried it she would be repulsed, but it was actually sweet in its own stupid Shinji way.

And then there was the part where she had kissed him on the veranda. She thought about that night only in fleeting spurts, skirting it to avoid feeling the embarrassment of that moment. But when she did dwell on it, let herself push through the embarrassment, she found that part of her wanted to do it again, and that in the past weeks that part had grown to become a majority.

She stood up and faced the mirror once more. She stared at herself, blew a strand of red hair from her face. She looked at her breasts, then covered them with her hands.

"Let's try it," she said. "I like you, Shinji. I think you're okay for an idiot. So if you want to go do something or whatever then I guess that'd be fine."

She stopped, and the face in the mirror smiled at her. "Yeah, that's never happening," she said, before turning out the light and walking back to her room.

((()))

The world was black and wet, the signal in her plug deadened by the inactivity of the Evangelion around it, and in the fifteen minutes it took for the recovery crew to come and dig her out, Asuka was left alone with her thoughts. The death scream of the angel wouldn't leave her. She turned in the LCL, floating free of her restraints, her face gripped by her rubberized fingertips. The sound-form of its death rattle was burned like a sunspot on her eyelids, and she kicked out, feet banging the plug wall in an attempt to get it out.

Why did it have to scream?

By the time the recovery team arrived and hauled the plug from its socket, the scream had started to fade, not disappearing so much as imprinting from her active memory onto a place in her deeper subconscious. Asuka knew that her eagerness to bury it would hurt her in the long run, but she needed to get rid of it. She needed help.

" _Sometimes people help each other, Asuka. That's part of growing up."_ She remembered Misato sitting there at the kitchen table, a glass of wine in her hand. She looked smug. No, not smug. Earnest. Trying to help. _"You aren't an island, as much as you'd like yourself to be."_

Asuka hauled herself into the recovery VTOL, pushing away a towel offered by one of the Nerv crewmembers. She'd let the LCL dry. It needed soap to get out of her hair, anyway. Just toweling it away was an exercise in futility.

The crew chief slammed the door shut and banged the hull, signaling to the pilot. Jets kicked into gear and the craft was airborne, careening over the battlefield and back toward Nerv headquarters. Asuka scooted on the passenger bench and looked out the window. The mountain was gone, replaced by a three-kilometer crater in the ground. Unit 02 was slumped against the lip, inactive. The swarm of recovery vehicles was already moving in, clearing space for an airlift to move the war machine out.

Not far to the north she could see Units 00 and 01. The latter was at the epicenter of the blast, and so at the lowest point in the crater. A second VTOL was just lifting off from the violet titan, its flight vector angling parallel to their own. Shinji's ride.

" _I like you too, Asuka."_

"Damn it," she muttered.


	8. Chapter 8

Misato Katsuragi shielded her face with her hand against the grit kicking off landing platform A02. Hyuga stood next to her. His mouth flapped but she couldn't hear him over the deafening whine of the VTOL's downdraft. Moreover she didn't care. Whatever he had to say—first wave after action damage assessment, public relations complaints, unit recovery progress—didn't matter. Nothing else mattered until she saw that her soldiers were home safe.

The first of the VTOLs landed, briefly. Its doors flew open and disgorged a wad of technicians, security personnel, and one pilot. He looked alone amid them, his eyes on the decking, his plugsuit slick with oily LCL. Misato walked into the downdraft to meet him, smiling. She saw the discomfort on his face and a part of her wanted to hug him and tell him that he was fine, that he'd always be fine, and that she had his back.

But the weight of the rank on her jacket stayed her hand and squelched the words before she could utter them.

"Good work out there," she said instead. She had to shout to be heard, and she felt stupid for saying it immediately after, when she saw no change in his face. He needed her comfort, not praise that wasn't hers to give. _Good work out there._ What a piss-poor substitute for a hug.

She set her hand on his shoulder, tried to make it reassuring. He smiled at her, a slight thing that was entirely for her benefit.

"Wait with Lieutenant Hyuga," she said. "We have to clear the pad for the next one."

((()))

The corridors of Nerv were nearly empty. What personnel Shinji saw were in a hurry, moving past the open door to the break room at top speed. The battle was over but Nerv's work was far from finished. Shinji sometimes forgot that part of the process—the cleanup and damage control, the crews scrubbing down whole buildings to get the blood and oil off the sides, and the smell of death that pervaded the city for weeks afterward.

He sat forward on the bench and toweled his hair. The LCL in his scalp squeaked, the towel only making it harder. He groaned and leaned back against the wall. "Asuka—" he started.

"Do you have your card on you?"

Shinji looked over at her, where she stood by the iced coffee machine. Aside from the two pilots, the break room was empty. "You want a coffee right now?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Hyuga said we were supposed to go to the command center."

"And you always do what you're told. Perfect stooge that you are."

"Am not," Shinji muttered. In truth, he was thankful for the reprieve. Going to the command center meant reporting to his father, and that prospect made him anxious. He would never avoid the meeting of his own accord, but now he could always blame it on Asuka. After all, she was the one who dragged him off to the break room.

"Do you have a card or don't you?" she asked.

"Huh? No."

Asuka frowned at him. "Well, guess this is your fault."

Shinji had been about to ask what she meant when Asuka shoved her padded elbow through the machine's glass display. The impact sent slivers raining across the tile.

"Asuka!" Shinji shouted.

"You want decaf or regular?"

"You can't do that!"

"Calm down. The security camera has been unplugged for days."

"That doesn't make it okay!"

"Whatever." The Second Child shrugged, pulling two cans from the shattered machine. She sat down next to him and passed him one. They drank in silence, staring ahead.

Shinji felt movement in his legs and arms even though they were completely still, a sensation not dissimilar from the after effects of being on a boat too long but amplified fourfold. Coming down off a synchronization was disorienting and it lingered for hours. One moment he had been a giant with the senses and strength of a giant. Then the circuits cut out and he was a boy again. It was jarring—a dead stop at the end of a skyscraper suicide.

"Did you feel it?" she asked. "The Angel. When I killed it."

Shinji nodded. "Yeah."

Asuka sipped her coffee, folded a leg under her body. "I can hear it, like it's screaming in the back of my eyelids. I've never had that before."

Shinji didn't know what to say, so he spoke from the heart. "That's what they don't understand. Misato, Ritsuko, my father. They don't know what it's like."

"They couldn't do it if they wanted to." Asuka shook her head. She hoped the spite would warm her, but she still tucked her body into the folds of her arms. "They ask us to save the world and still want us to pay for coffee."

Shinji sat there in silence. He wondered if now was one of those times when he could put an arm around her and not get murdered. It had happened once before, and he figured his luck would hold. Then he saw that she was staring at him. He looked away instantly, his face turning red. Her voice was right in his ear.

"Look at me, Shinji."

"Why?"

"Just do it. I want to ask you something important," she said.

Shinji took a breath and looked at her. She was close. Her eyes filled his vision, two blue orbs that stabbed into him. She looked intense, and for a moment he could smell her. It was that same scent she'd had weeks before, his nose in her hair, but mixed with the blood-hot sting of LCL. He shuddered and tried to hide it.

Look cool, idiot. Don't screw this up. His thoughts stopped the shuddering but did nothing to halt his erection.

This girl was about to say something important. He knew that. He could almost taste it and see it in her gaze.

Then her eyes softened and she backed away. "How's my Japanese?" she asked.

Shinji blinked. "Huh?"

"My Japanese, stupid. How is it?" She frowned. "And be honest. Everyone at school says it's great, and I think they're lying to me."

Shinji considered doing the same. Lying to Asuka was sometimes easier than telling the truth. She was accustomed to lies. She dished them out and she expected them in return. Shinji suspected she didn't really care about her Japanese. This whole conversation, which had started out very serious, was a lot of nonsense.

"It's okay."

"That bad, huh?"

"I can still understand you most of the time."

"Most of the time. Wonderful."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. I asked for the truth. It's on me." Asuka waved her hand, trying to play it off like the whole thing was a spur of the moment topic. Shinji watched her, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting to see what the hell she was driving at.

She sipped her coffee, milking the moment. "Hey," she said. "We have to make this fair."

"Fair?"

"I got to ask you a question with a truthful answer. Now you get one for me." She crossed her arms and looked at him. "C'mon, Third. Fire away."

She had in her head an expectation, which invited disappointment. She assumed she had backed him into a corner where he would be the one to solve her problem. With any luck, he would ask her if she really liked him, because he was unsure, and then she could answer truthfully without becoming weaker. Then he could kiss her, or hold her, or be her boyfriend. And then their relationship could be a tangible thing built on a proper foundation of deception and mind games, and they could move forward from there.

That was Asuka's expectation. The disappointment followed.

"We should go to the bridge." Shinji stood up and threw his coffee in the trash, half-drank and leaking. He left the room and started down the corridor. Asuka followed him.

"Now wait a second," she said. "Where the hell are you going?"

Shinji kept silent and kept walking. He ran the towel through his hair, scrubbing at the dried liquid. Something about that made her angrier.

"Hey!" She picked up the pace and grabbed him by the arm. "Answer me!"

He grabbed her hand and shoved it away. "You never say anything!"

"What?"

"You want me to figure out what's wrong with you or what you want out of me but you never say anything! I don't know what you want from me!"

Asuka watched his face, saw the tears beginning to well at the corners of his eyes. He didn't look away this time.

"You talk around things and yell at me and call me stupid but you like me, too. What do you want from me?" Shinji backed away. "You're the only friend I have and I barely know who you are."

"But you like me."

"Yes. I told you that before."

"Why?" Asuka shoved him and he fell back against the wall. "Why?"

"I don't know."

"'I don't know'. You don't know anything, idiot."

"That's not true."

"You're just afraid. You're afraid of your father, you're afraid of the Eva, and you're afraid of me. You don't know what you want and you don't know how to get it. You're the worst kind of coward, Shinji."

"I'm a coward."

"Yes! You don't want to face up to anything!"

"And that's so unlike you."

"Damn right it is."

"Alright." Shinji stared at her. The words built in his throat, an envenomed gorge. He spat them without thinking. "Then what happened to your mother, Asuka?"

He anticipated her fist from the way her face tightened and the sudden shift of her weight, little details he had learned to notice during that week of living side-by-side to synchronize, as close to within one another's skin as was possible. What he did not know of Asuka's mind was made up for in knowledge of her body, a thing he had observed, trained alongside, and that he fantasized about in selfish, shameful moments. He ducked and her fist connected with the wall.

He backed away, hands held up, realizing his mistake. "Asuka—"

"Shut up!" She lunged forward, another punch headed for his face. He ducked back and she missed, but he tripped and fell and she was on top of him. She grabbed the towel around his neck and raised his head off the tile. "Apologize."

Perhaps it was the pain of his head smacking the floor, or the adrenaline flooding his combat-frayed nerves. Whatever the reason, Shinji Ikari was beyond apologies.

"No."

Her knuckles collided with his nose.

"Apologize, idiot."

There were tears in her eyes that streamed down to her lips, but she was still beautiful. She was always beautiful. She shook him, screamed again. He wished the hallways weren't so deserted. Then he felt her fingers move from the towel to his neck.

The Second Child strangled the Third, and likely would have killed him if he hadn't touched her cheek. His touch was the cold polymer print of a plugsuit's fingertips, but it was warm nonetheless. She leaned into it, so that his fingers ran through her hair even as her grip tightened around his throat. She looked at him and for what felt like the first time in their shared history the two pilots made eye contact.

His hand held still for as long as it took for her to release her grip—for her to process what his unconditional touch meant, and to forgive him for needing it and herself for needing him. Then his hand fell away and he inhaled a ragged breath.

"I'm sorry," Shinji said.

"Shut up already."

She leaned down and kissed him. It felt nothing like their kiss from before, that little tipsy peck on the veranda. That had been a joke, the kiss of a child. This felt altogether more terrifying and adult. The hard tile beneath them, the heat of his mouth, the blood running from his nose to mix with the streaking tears on her cheeks. She grabbed him by the hair and tightened her legs, clenching his waist between her thighs. She wanted to melt into him and she hated herself for it. This was a need that she did not want and it hurt, but not as much as the pain of his not reciprocating.

His hands reached up and wrapped around her waist and pulled her down. With their chests pressed together she could feel him shiver as he kissed her back. His tongue was in her mouth and his hands were on her back and in her hair, and for the first time in an hour the phantom wounds, lingering Angel death screams, and the machinations and expectations of an incomprehensible, adult world all died away in the face of two teenagers making out.

((()))

The communication window snapped open with a wink of holographic interference before stabilizing. The profile was sound only but Major Katsuragi snapped to attention nevertheless. The Sub-Commander's voice was curt and tired. "Report, Major."

"Commander, I take full responsibility for the collateral damage caused during the operation. Units 01 and 02 suffered severe damage, and Unit 00 suffered minimal damage."

"That's alright. It could have been much worse."

Misato exhaled a breath she had been holding since the operation began. Despite the threat to herself, her pilots, and the future of all mankind, there was always room for fear of a superior officer's displeasure.

The comm. window blinked, its profile changing to that of the Commander himself. "Major, is the pilot of Unit 01 there?"

That was unexpected. Misato shared a look with Dr. Akagi, and then checked behind her. Where there should have been three children there stood only one. Rei Ayanami looked back at her, unblinking.

"Um. No, sir. Not at the moment."

There was a pause, and Misato tried not to acknowledge the sideways glances of every technician within earshot. The Commander was enigmatic at the best of times, and his distant attitude toward his own son was a mainstay product of break room rumor mills.

"Very well," the Commander said at last. "Carry on, Major."

"Yes, sir."

The window winked off and the command personnel went back to their business, none of them aware of the impact the Commander's words—or lack thereof—had on the blue-haired pilot behind them.


	9. Chapter 9

Misato Katsuragi looked at her soldier. "What happened to your nose?"

Shinji shrugged. "Nothing much."

He continued cooking, ignorant of his guardian's stare. Misato frowned and ran a hand through her hair. Her head was a pounding mass of hangover, reminding her that it was the weekend. It was morning but the apartment was already sweltering. The air conditioner was broken and Shinji had opened the door to the veranda to stir some air flow. It helped, kind of.

Misato sighed. "Was it that kid at school again?"

"Toji is fine."

"I can kill him if you want me to."

"You can't kill him."

"I've been promoted, Shinji. I can kill anyone I want."

"That's not right."

"It's military law."

"No it's not."

Misato watched his face and caught the hint of a smile as it graced his lips. She grinned and ruffled his hair. "I get it. If you don't want to talk about it, I won't press you."

"Thanks, Misato."

"No problem." She leaned back and pulled a beer from the fridge, then left for the veranda. She sat and sipped, letting the alcohol and gentle breeze cool the pounding in her head.

The city swam in a heat haze. The sound of agitated cicadas and rattling construction equipment teased at the edge of her hearing, cut every so often by a passing car engine. Misato felt the sun on her bare legs and stretched out, daring to enjoy it.

The phone rang inside the apartment. Misato waited, listening to the ringing until it stopped and she heard Shinji speak a muffled hello. A moment later he walked out onto the veranda. "It's for you," he said.

Misato took the phone. "Hello?"

"What in the hell is wrong with you?"

"Good morning to you too, Ritsuko."

"I can't believe that you let—wait, is he standing right there?"

Sighing, Misato waved Shinji back inside. He left. "No," she said.

"What the hell is the matter with you?"

"Is this the fight thing?"

"Yes! I just got Section Three's email a minute ago—a week late, I might add. What are you doing about this?"

Misato drank, shrugged. "Nothing."

Of course she knew who had punched Shinji and why. Section Three made very detailed reports, even if they never saw fit to intervene and stop a pilot from actually getting pummeled. Misato had hoped that one pilot punching and then strangling another pilot might shake the security detail out of their malaise, but she was wrong.

She didn't know what to think of the Asuka/Shinji fight-kiss-choke-slam. She was sure that pressing Shinji on the issue would do nothing. If understanding the event was tough for her then it was an impossible mess to the Third Child's fourteen-year-old brain. For now, Misato planned to just keep the kids from killing each other, which seemed like a difficult job on its own. Anything that happened on top of that—friendship, boosted teamwork, young love—was just bonus points.

"Nothing," Ritsuko repeated. "You're joking."

"Nope."

"Your little experiment backfired, Misato. Your pilots are choking each other."

"They ended up kissing."

"Oh, that's funny."

"It shouldn't be." Misato stood up and walked to the railing. She looked behind her and made sure that she could see Shinji, standing in the kitchen, far out of earshot. "You have the same psych profiles as me. Did anything about this surprise you?"

"Yes. A lot of it. Most of it. All of it. Every single bit of this surprised me."

Misato rolled her eyes. "Okay, yes, but in hindsight those profiles predicted it. Asuka and Shinji were never going to get along from the jump. We knew there would be growing pains."

"She _strangled_ him."

"And then kissed him. Let's not forget how it ended with a kiss."

"So sweet."

"Damn right."

Ritsuko sighed. It was that particular kind of Ritsuko sigh that told her very old college friend that the argument was over and that Ritsuko was defeated, either because she was soundly defeated through logic—which was impossible—or she was fed up with Misato's blind optimism and had better things to do.

"Alright. I won't write up a negative report. You seem to have this in hand. Somehow."

"Thank you, dear Ritsuko."

"Shut up and nurse your hangover."

"That is offensive but not inaccurate."

Misato hung up the phone and went back to her chair. Her head was throbbing more, and she started to use her beer as a makeshift ice pack. She closed her eyes and wondered what the hell she was going to do with her Saturday.

((()))

Asuka walked into the kitchen. She had slept with her face under a pillow and stuffed against the mattress, and her hair had become a tangled mass of red. She scratched her head and got a glass of water, bumping into Shinji in the process.

"Sorry," he said, and moved aside.

Asuka grumbled something in German, then in Japanese. "What are you making?"

"Tamagoyaki."

"Again?" Asuka hoisted herself onto the counter. "Japanese omelets. Gross."

"Just don't throw anything."

Asuka looked at the back of his head. "Did you just display your spine, Shinji Ikari?"

"I have a spine." Shinji didn't look back at her. "And I'm not picking up another broken dish."

It was this quiet defiance that Shinji had presented to her for the past week, and she was beginning to like it. Who knew that punching a boy could be so useful?

Asuka smiled. "How does your nose feel?"

He still did not look at her. "It's okay."

"Do you trust me?"

That turned him around. He set his utensil down and looked at her. "I don't know."

"Like in a fight." Asuka leaned against the counter, close to him. "Like in all those cheesy war movies where guys say stuff like 'I know you got my back!' When we're in the Evas. Do you trust me to save your life?"

Shinji shook his head. "No."

"I figured as much." Asuka leaned forward, looking through the living room to the balcony. The only part of Misato that was visible was her leg, and it looked pretty asleep. She grinned and slid down the counter, closer to Shinji. Her proximity induced a stutter in his throat that worsened when she rested her hands on his shoulders. "I trust you, by the way."

"Oh. Okay." His eyes wandered, checking the balcony for himself.

"Don't look at her. Look at me."

His eyes snapped back to her. The kid was nervous, and he had a right to be. Asuka had avoided making any additional move for the past week, choosing to live in the memory of that hallway instead of trying to reenact it. She didn't know what compelled her to try something now. Perhaps it was that it was a weekend and she had nothing better to do. Perhaps she had waited too long without it, and her curiosity was getting the better of her. And then there was the truth that Misato was just out of sight and Asuka wanted to get away with something.

She pulled on his shoulders and wrapped his waist with her legs, which was all the encouragement Shinji needed. He leaned in and kissed her. Asuka realized he had been thinking about it just as much, and had developed ideas that included fingers on the back of her neck and in her hair. She was very okay with these ideas and pulled him in closer with her calves. His knees thudded against the lower cabinets.

"Well, time for another beer," Misato said, with the sound of her patio chair creaking upright.

Asuka shoved her copilot back, and sent him stumbling into the kitchen table. She jumped down off the counter and tried to look natural by picking up where Shinji left off cooking breakfast.

Misato stopped at the open door frame, and took one look at the scene: Shinji in an apron but not cooking, and Asuka at the stove, butchering the food. Asuka didn't look at her. Shinji did, his face beat red.

"How's it going in here?" she asked.

"Fine," they chorused.

"Good to hear." Misato tossed her empty can in the trash, pulled another one from the fridge, and began to walk away. "Don't hurt each other."

((()))

Leading four lives was exhausting. After so long living in the shadows, the minutiae of espionage had become commonplace. A hundred passwords, call-signs and code strands floated in his brain, and he never wrote anything down unless he deliberately wanted it in the wrong hands. Hairs spread across closet doors, handguns under pillows, disposable cellphones, dead drops—it was all a part of him. But disinformation bred dissolution, and there were moments, hours, and days where his higher self—the part of him that was him—remained unengaged. That's when he felt the shadows again, and came close to cracking beneath his veneer of calm.

His week had been that, from Monday to the small hours of Saturday morning, when he finally tossed a hard drive he wasn't supposed to have into a river that no one ever checked and made the walk back into Tokyo-3. Now he sat on a park bench, can of coffee in hand, and tried to be Ryoji Kaji the Normal Guy for an afternoon. It was a common ritual, drinking coffee in the park. Strangers and trees un-complicated his complications, while the coffee kept him alive. He was just getting into the swing of it when his cellphone rang. He checked his pockets to find the right phone, and answered it.

"Go ahead," he said.

"'Go ahead.'" Misato's impression sounded like it had a thick neck and wore a suit. "'This is Kaji. Go for dust-off.'"

"Good morning, Misato," he said, easing into the conversation. "I don't mean to sound gruff. It's been a long week."

"I'll take your word for it. I'm sure it was hard doing whatever it is that you do for the Commander."

"Dry cleaning, mostly."

"Well, all those black suits are expensive. Can't just shove those in a washing machine."

Kaji smiled. "What are you up to?"

"Not a thing. Just sitting here, enjoying the hot day and a cool beverage, trying not to pay attention to the teenagers playing hanky-panky in my kitchen."

"That's strange. Last I heard, she was strangling him."

"It ended with them kissing! Why does no one remember the kissing?" Misato paused. "How do you know about that, anyway?"

"I hear things. I have my sources."

"You're nosy for a drycleaner."

"All part of my charm." Kaji leaned back, enjoying the ease with which Misato brought out his inner-normal-guy. Being with Misato had been one of the most comfortable experiences of his life. He only wished it had been as easy for her. "So what's the problem, exactly? I thought you wanted this."

"I did. I do. I just got to thinking about that thing you said, about how Shinji is a snake and Asuka is a mouse."

"Cobra."

"Same thing. What did you mean by that?"

Kaji frowned. He was unsure how deeply he should get involved in Misato's stumbling machinations. He understood the situation that the Second and Third Children had been thrust into, and he had a particular understanding of Asuka. His assignment as her handler, cover-story that it was, had given him more insight into the pilot than he cared to have. He lived with her, but still possessed enough detachment to see her volatility for the mask it was. It had taken him weeks to see through her exterior to the broken, insecure child within.

Shinji's mask had fallen on first glance, and the truth was not pretty.

Misato was getting impatient. "Have you met Shinji Ikari?" she said. "The kid isn't a cobra. He wouldn't hurt a fly."

"There is rage in him," Kaji said. "I've seen the footage, and I read your reports. 'The Third Child disobeyed orders and made an aggravated, close quarters assault.' Your words."

"One: Your impression of me is terrible. Two: That's different. He's in the Eva. You can't judge his aggression from that. He barely wants to pilot the thing anyway. Most days it feels like my whole job is convincing him to get in the seat."

"And why do you think he's so reluctant?"

"It hurts. It's scary. It gets him into crappy situations at school."

She had never really considered it. Akagi had. The Commander, Fuyutsuki, and whoever the Marduk people actually were—they had all considered it. But Misato never delved deeper than the simple answers. _It hurts. It makes it hard to find friends._ It was refreshing, in a way. At least there was one person left who believed in the goodness of a child.

"Maybe." Kaji rested his head and looked up into the blue, and what wispy streaks of cloud were left to the noon heat. "Or he's afraid of what he becomes when he gets in that seat. And if that's true, then perhaps he withdraws from people because he's afraid of what their confidence and love will make him become."

"That's very mysterious. Also pretty useless."

Kaji laughed. "Do you know that old factoid about how most people end up married to a person that resembles their opposite-sex parent?"

"More than most," she said, though he could hear her grin. He considered that it sounded inviting, but didn't want to get his hopes up.

"So if that's true, then you end up acting like your same-sex parent. I think Shinji avoids decisions because each choice brings him that much closer to being the thing he hates most in this world."

"You're being melodramatic."

"I call it like I see it."

"Then you need your eyes checked. He's distant, sure, but he's nothing like the Commander. He's a good kid."

"You're right. I'm sorry." Kaji stood from his bench and stretched. The coffee was empty. "Now, are you going to invite me over, or do I have to impose on you?"

"Yeah, right." Her laughter let him down easy before she hung up.

Kaji looked at the phone in his hand. "Can't blame a guy for trying," he said.


	10. Chapter 10

The lunch bell rang, signaling the exodus from Class 2-A's homeroom. The children were allowed to eat anywhere on campus, though this, as with anything, was subject to middle school politics and social constraints. Certain groups had certain spots, and to violate these all-important clique boundaries was to court death. Asuka had learned this on her first day, and decided to deal with the social structure by keeping herself above it. She ate alone at her desk the first few days, until Hikari started joining her.

Today was no different. They sat together, Hikari talking, Asuka trying to listen while her mind wandered. She thought about a lot of things, but of late, most of those thoughts involved Shinji and trying to make his face as much a part of her face as was possible without eating it. Asuka cracked open her bento. Every part of it was immaculately packed, and the uppermost layer had a note on it.

'Rice contains sauerkraut. Hope you like it. Shinji.'

Asuka lifted the note between two fingers. Part of her wondered what he was up to, but the rest of her smiled uncontrollably. The kid was good.

"Is something wrong?" Hikari asked, munching.

Asuka looked at her. "What?"

"You're smiling." Hikari reached out. "What is that?"

Asuka crumple-slammed the note deep into her food. "Nothing."

"Is that a note from Shinji?"

"No. Go away."

"It is!" Hikari clapped her hands together. "What's it say?"

"Instructions for me squishing you." Asuka leaned in and grabbed her friend by the wrists. "Keep it down!"

Hikari kept it down, but barely. "Tell me," she said. "Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me."

Asuka went back to her food. "It's nothing out of the ordinary," she said. "He's just been kinda nicer recently."

"You're doing your lying face again." Hikari leaned in. "Come on, Asuka!"

"For the love of Gott." Asuka rolled her eyes. "We made out a couple weeks ago."

Hikari lost her smile. "You what?"

"Yeah, we made out." Asuka played at her rice, took a bite. "It's been cool since then. He still makes me food, and we spend more time together. It's almost like when we were in tandem training. We don't even talk that much."

She thought about that as she ate. There was something comforting about sharing silence with Shinji, mostly because speaking with Shinji was insufferable. A conversation brought on a fight, but in silence, everything was better. Sometimes, in the moments where she let herself get introspective about it, Asuka thought that the silences brought out who they really were. She knew more about Shinji by the smell of his hair and a look in his eyes than she did by a thousand words that came out of his mouth. The kid had jumped into an active volcano to save her life—what could he ever say that was more meaningful than that?

Then the rest of her kicked in and demanded the validation that only came with speech. It was complicated.

"You're living in sin," Hikari said.

Asuka dropped her chopsticks. "Don't you start with that. Don't you ever."

((()))

Rei Ayanami ate alone. She purchased her meal from the cafeteria, brought it back to her desk, and ate quietly. She looked out the window and down, into the courtyard, and saw the Third Child sitting with his friend, Suzuhara. They were laughing. Rei wondered why. The last time she saw the two of them together in the courtyard, Suzuhara had his fist plunged into Pilot Ikari's nose. What had changed? And where was their third friend?

The answer came in a shadow that fell across her desk, and Rei felt the presence of someone standing directly above her. She looked up, and said nothing.

"Hey, Rei," said Kensuke Aida.

His face was flushed and his smile was tremulous. He clutched a sack from the cafeteria. She waited for him to continue. Eventually, he did.

"I tried to catch you in the cafeteria, but you were already headed back up," he said. "Whatcha eating?"

"Curry," she said, because she was.

"Yeah. Alright then. Cool."

Aida shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He flexed his grip on the sack. The plastic crinkled. The few students left in the room had stopped eating to watch this. Rei caught sight of them from the corner of her eye. She spotted Pilot Soryu, who had turned in her seat to watch, a grin on her face.

Rei looked back to the boy above her. "What do you want?"

"Well, I, uh." Aida took a breath. "I mean, if I could eat lunch with you—by you—sitting here and we could, you know, eat at the same time. Together. Could we eat lunch together?"

Rei stared at him. "Why?"

"I don't know," he said. "I just thought it might be fun if—"

"No."

"I'm sorry?"

"No, thank you." Rei turned away and looked back out the window. After a moment, she heard Aida walk away, and the swarm of voices picked back up. She resumed her meal, ignorant of the speculation running wild throughout the room, and the look on the Second Child's face.

((()))

Head scientist of Project E was a prestigious title, but the office of the head scientist of Project E was very small and unwelcoming. Ritsuko Akagi didn't mind it much. She was rarely in her office, since her work kept her running all over Central Dogma. Most necessary files stayed on her roving datapad, the terminal in her office being really only useful for extended periods of typing and power naps. Right now was one of the latter.

The door buzzed, waking her. She sat up and palmed her eyes, then searched the trio of half-drunk cups of coffee on her desk. Cold. Cold. Hot-ish. Shrugging, she downed the last one. "Come in!" she said.

Kaji entered, but stopped just inside the doorway. "You were asleep," he said.

"Of course," she said. "I was up all last night prepping today's test."

"Why not leave it to Lieutenant Ibuki?"

Ritsuko chuckled. "Maya is good, but she still needs help."

"So you stayed up with her all night, just the two of you."

"She sees me as a mentor."

"You're leading her on." Kaji leaned on her desk. "It's a shocking violation of ethics."

"You're one to talk, 'Chief Inspector.'"

"I don't know what you're implying, and I feel defamed."

Ritsuko smiled. Kaji was a scoundrel in the purest, Victorian England sense of the word, but he was still someone she had known a very long time. Maybe that wasn't the best reason to call someone a friend, especially considering how he was so obviously stealing secrets from her department and giving them away to at least two other parties, but he was one of two friends that she had, and she aimed to keep him.

"What do you need, Kaji?"

"Just details." He handed her a can of coffee. "It's cold, but I hear it's supposed to be."

Ritsuko accepted it. "Details. Go on."

"Let's start with today's test. What's this I hear about the pilots being naked?"

"There's a good reason for that." Ritsuko leaned back in her chair. "This is our first time synchronizing the pilots with their test bodies. Most synch tests are back-up plugs that synch remotely to the actual Units. These things are different. We just grew them for this experiment. No cores, no liaison systems, just bodies. Pure data. See if a pilot can wrangle a raw organism."

"I'm not hearing naked anywhere."

"They're naked for another experiment. I want to see if the plug suits interfere with synchronization. Besides basic life support and vital monitoring subsystems, the suits don't actually do anything. They're just a placebo." She waved her hand dismissively. "I'd like to test that separately, but I'm only allowed so much experimentation time with the kids."

"What a monstrous limitation."

"What a Katsuragi limitation," Ritsuko said. "Which is probably the next thing you want to talk about."

Kaji grinned his stupid, infectious grin and raised his can. "Doctor Akagi, it's as if you know me."

"She won't sleep with you," she said.

"Ah, don't I know it." Kaji's grin held steady. "But who says I want her, when I have only eyes for you?"

"She turned you down."

"I haven't really tried that hard, yet."

"So that's a yes." Ritsuko shook her head. "Misato has changed a lot in eight years, Kaji. Besides, she's too busy playing matchmaker to start any love of her own."

"About that. Are we not supposed to talk about the kids' little spat in the hallway?"

"Officially, you can talk about whatever you want to talk about," Ritsuko said.

"And unofficially," said Kaji, "does Commander Ikari know what his son has gotten into?"

Ritsuko ran her finger around the rim of her coffee can. "Very unofficially? Yes."

"And for the most unofficial, hypothetical news of all: did he approve?"

Ritsuko laughed. "What do you think?"

((()))

The sound of cicadas had become a constant background to Asuka's time in Japan. Most days she liked them. There was something unnervingly natural about a noise that pervaded everything, yet had no discernable source. She had yet to actually _see_ a cicada, but she knew they were there. She listened to their song as she walked from school, letting their constant hymn calm her.

Shinji walked next to her, having a complex about whether or not to try and hold her hand, while Rei trailed behind, watchful.

"I got your note," Asuka said, breaking the silence that had settled since they left the schoolyard.

"Yeah?" Shinji said.

"Yeah. It was nice." It took a lot out of her to pay that compliment, and she didn't look at him when she said it. She decided to move away from the subject. "Did you see Rei's little boyfriend today?"

"No." Shinji looked at her, then back to Rei, who didn't bat an eye. "What's that mean?"

"Don't play dumb, Third. You put him up to it."

"I don't even know what's happening."

Rei spoke up. "I do not have a boyfriend."

"I know." Asuka gave an exasperated sigh and hit Shinji in the arm. "Aida made a move on Wondergirl."

Shinji looked shocked. "Kensuke? What'd he do, Rei?"

"He said I was faster at getting food than him, and then said it would be nice to eat lunch with me." Rei looked at Asuka. "But he is not my boyfriend."

Asuka smiled. "Oh, I know. It was pretty obvious you weren't interested."

"I told him 'no.'"

"Broke his little stooge heart right in two." Asuka turned to Shinji. "He might've been on to something, though."

Shinji frowned. "What's that?"

The trio stopped at a crosswalk and waited for the traffic to cease. They weren't far from the nearest geofront terminal, which was all well and good, since the cicadas had worn out their welcome in the afternoon heat. Asuka stretched her arms and leaned against a telephone pole, waiting for the signal to change.

"Why don't we sit together tomorrow?" she said.

"Huh?"

"At lunch, dork. I sit with Hikari all the time, and that's getting boring. And I know you're tired of sitting with the stooges. Who wouldn't be?"

Shinji gave a small smile, which in turn made Asuka smile.

"Sure," he said. "I'd like that."

Rei looked between the both of them, checking their faces. Then she looked at Asuka. "Ikari is your boyfriend."

The scream was heard in orbit.

"What!?"

Shinji jumped in front of his roommate and caught the brunt of her flying tackle. He held his ground, heels digging into the pavement, hands on her shoulders as she railed against him. Rei held still, school bag in both hands, watching them.

Asuka fumed. "What the hell kind of question is that? Where do you get off saying that, you little wind-up—"

"Asuka!" Shinji shouted, which seemed to stun her. "It's okay. She didn't mean anything by it."

She looked at him, and again he had those blue eyes right there, bright and immediate and filling his sight. "Yeah, well, so is she right or what?"

Shinji blinked. "I—"

"Are you?" Asuka stopped pushing him. Her hands touched his collar, then ran up his arms to his hands, which were still on her shoulders. He felt her fingers on his knuckles for a brief instant before she withdrew from him all together, but her eyes—her intensely defiant, screamingly vulnerable, threatening, mystifying, ludicrously blue eyes—were still locked with his.

"Are you?" she repeated, though he had found the answer already.

"I hope so," he said, which was all he could ever be sure of. Hope. Hope that he mattered to her. Hope that she loved him back as much and as desperately as he loved her. Hope that it was all worth something. God damn, he hoped.

Those blue eyes smiled. "Good."

Rei cleared her throat. "The light says 'walk.'"

((()))

Misato waited three minutes for an elevator, but when the doors opened, she nearly didn't get inside.

"I'll trade you, if that'll make this less awkward," said Kaji.

"Don't be juvenile." She stepped in next to him and hit the button for the pribnow box. "I lived with you once. I think I can stand next to you without getting into an argument."

"I seem to remember a lot of arguments in that apartment. Among other things."

"I should've taken the next one."

"Sorry. Just a joke." Kaji pointed to the key panel. "Heading to the test?"

Misato nodded, not looking up from the tablet in her arm. "Yep. The kids are changing right now. Or just getting naked. Whatever Ritsuko is making them do. Where are you heading?"

"A little lower down." He glanced over her shoulder, at the screen. "If you ever get your reports finished, we should get a drink sometime."

"I'll pass." The door opened and Misato got out. She turned back, briefly, and regarded him. "Be careful, alright? You're not as subtle as you think."

"Is that concern?"

"I'm serious, Ryoji."

"Me, too," he said, as the doors slid together. "We should really get a drink!"

The doors closed. Misato took a breath and headed toward the observation chamber. In less than an hour, the eleventh Angel would begin its attack.


	11. Chapter 11

The first hours passed in silence. Asuka drifted in her plug, which in turn drifted atop the Geofront lake. Brief waves sloshed the LCL in opposition to the rocking plug, so that if she kept her eyes closed, Asuka felt as though she were resting between two clouds slipping past one another. The plug's reserve power was active, but couldn't run much besides life support and communications. She could pop the seal and get out, but Misato had ordered her not to. Besides, she was very naked.

The rocking was disorienting and boring. Asuka idly kicked off the end of the plug and let her momentum carry her up, past the cockpit seat and down the sloping aft, to the high-end with its explosive bolts and ejection nozzles. She tagged the wall and kicked off again, back the other way, past the seat and down, heading coreward. It was a familiar circuit. She used to do it often. In Germany, she would swim back and forth while the control team calibrated the test array. It was her warm-up. "Plug diving," she used to call it, back when she ran her synch tests in an old-model plug suit. Back when she was a kid.

Asuka drifted into her seat again. She righted herself and thumbed the control panel, activating the communications suite. She had no active signals from Nerv HQ or any of the security force outposts, which was strange. When had that happened? Misato had contacted them just an hour before, right after the Angel attack. Something melted through the test chamber wall, Asuka's test body lost sensation, and then she and the others were suddenly ejected. Misato's orders had been curt: stay in your plug and wait for instructions. No arguments.

But now she had no signal to the command center. It was as if there had been a total blackout. All that was left was the signal to two other plugs—Shinji and Rei.

Her cursor hovered over Shinji's name. She took a breath and clicked it. AUDIO-ONLY/VISUAL-AUDIO? it prompted.

AUDIO-ONLY.

The connection chimed, and she waited for Shinji to accept the feed, arms folded across her breasts. He had probably forgotten how to do it. She imagined him fumbling around, trying to find the thing.

Part of her hated him for it. He knew nothing. He hadn't trained as long as her, hadn't been selected by the institute. He got the job through nepotism. But that frustration had faded in recent weeks. Shinji wasn't all that bad. He was new, true, but he needed help. She could help him.

And now, as of the walk from school to Nerv, he was her boyfriend. All thanks to Wondergirl not picking up on anything. Maybe she wasn't so bad after all.

Then Shinji, being the idiot that he was, accepted the call with default settings—meaning audio and video. Asuka jolted upright at the sudden sight of Shinji's everything plastered all over her monitor. Then the screaming started.

"You massive idiot!"

"Sorry!" he said, his free hand flapping for the signal controls in all the places that the signal controls weren't located, his other hand covering his junk. "I didn't know—"

"Didn't know what? Just turn off the feed!"

"I don't know where—"

"Turn it off turn it off turn it off!"

"How?!"

Asuka groaned. "Second toggle, left control! Come on, Third!"

The feed winked off, displaying an audio-only incoming. Shinji audibly sighed. "Sorry about that."

Asuka dropped her hands from her face. "My eyes are burned. Permanently."

"I'm sorry."

"How do you not know that control by know? You've been doing this for months."

"I never had to do it naked."

"That makes sense," she said, scoffing to make sure the sarcasm came through despite her clumsy Japanese. It did.

"Did you need something, Asuka?"

She smiled. That was his irritated voice, the new one that had started to appear in the last few weeks. The new Shinji.

"Just wanted to check in and see how you were handling it. I know being isolated in a plug can be hard, especially your first time," she said.

Shinji was quiet for a moment. "No," he said, eventually. "I'm fine. I've got it."

"Do you have signal to the command center?" she said.

"I'm not sure. One second."

"It's on the same toggle."

"I know, damnit." She heard him clicking for a moment. "No, nothing. What's going on?"

"I don't know." Asuka drifted off her seat, closer to the signal window. "Do you think Misato can handle this without us?"

"Sure," he said, and this time with no hesitation. "Why wouldn't she?"

"Well, so far she's needed an Eva to stop every Angel."

"I'm sure she ejected us for a good reason. Misato is smart. She knows what she's doing."

"Maybe," Asuka said. "But maybe not. You never know."

"Asuka, can we stop talking about this?"

She frowned but didn't fight back. She felt it, too—the listlessness. The command center had been out of contact for a while. No communications, no pings, and not even a signal reception indicator. If it weren't for the view of the Geofront's lake from her external cameras, the three plugs could just as well have slipped into a black hole. Thinking about the radio silence meant thinking up reasons _for_ the radio silence, and that meant poisonous and uncomfortable thoughts.

"Hey," she said, in lieu of all that, "what do you think of your stooge and Wondergirl?"

"I don't know," he said.

"You have to have an opinion. You're his friend, and you've known her for a while now. C'mon. Think they could make little stooge babies together?"

"Asuka—"

"Just imagine: a lot of near-sighted, blue-haired whackos running around. None of them smiling, and they're all filming everything all the time. Isn't that creepy?"

"Asuka, that's cruel."

She looked at the signal box. "What the hell does that mean?"

"You're being mean," he said.

She didn't scream at him. Somehow, the facelessness of his representation—just a little orange box with white lettering—gave her less to be angry at. Shinji wasn't Shinji, or at least the parts she hated. He wasn't the kid who looked down at his shoes instead of into your eyes, even though he hadn't been that in a while, either. He was Shinji's words, Shinji's thoughts and feelings and heart, and she didn't hate any of those things.

"Sometimes I'm mean," she said, crossing her legs. "I just don't get her. That's all. Do you? You know her better."

"I'd just rather not talk about it," he said.

"Okay, alright." The line was silent for a moment. Asuka floated, trying to think of anything to say that didn't involve the last time they'd made out. "Y'know, we do have to kind of thank her for helping us out."

"Yeah?"

"If it weren't for her, you wouldn't be my boyfriend right now. How does it feel, by the way? You're dating the most popular girl in school."

"I, uh, appreciate my good fortune," he said, smile in his voice.

"You'd better. If you don't, I'll stop trying to make out with you in the kitchen."

"No," he said, more immediately than he probably meant to. "I mean, yes, yes. Let's not stop that. That is good."

"Smooth, Third."

((()))

"Why can't they just be a giant monsters?" Misato said, when she thought that no one was listening.

The command center was busy, but none of it involved her. Ritsuko's team was swarming the Magi deck, and most of the support staff not seconded to that purpose had been asked to leave or man their stations in the most economical and least-intrusive ways possible. Misato, for her part, stood at the rear of the chamber, watching the proceedings and glaring at the big display, where a confusing infographic of the Magi showed that a good portion of them were filled with little red rectangles.

"Most of them are," said a voice. Misato realized with a start who it belonged to, and immediately wondered how such an old man could move so stealthily.

"Sub-Commander," she said, saluting. "I didn't see you there."

"Quite all right, Major." Kozou Fuyutsuki waved her salute away. "The Angels are irritating that way. They appear to us one after another, each one large and devastating, and we get complacent. But each has their little tricks and idiosyncrasies." He looked at her. "You've been very good at finding those tricks, I might add."

"That's why they pay me the big bucks," she said.

"They pay you in money?"

"Sometimes," she said.

"Huh. All I get is busywork and blackmail."

Misato laughed, despite the situation. The old man smiled. She had rarely had a long conversation with the sub-commander, and had never had the time to adjust to him. He had an almost fatherly quality to him, though he always seemed reserved, as if there was something holding him back from really embracing his life.

"How are the Children?" he asked.

"I'm not sure." Misato gestured at the big screen. "With that thing in charge of half our systems, we can't get any signals in or out, and all of our external doors are offline, so physical retrieval and recon is out of the question, too."

Fuyutsuki made a show of squinting at the display. "You can read that?"

"Sometimes, but mostly it's just all squiggles," she said, grinning.

"I am glad to see I'm not alone," he said. "Major, I meant to ask after the pilots in your home. How are they?"

"Oh," Misato said. "They're doing well, sir. Asuka's grades have gone up in the last month, and I think she's finally adjusting to Japanese life. Shinji is… Shinji. As always."

Fuyutsuki looked at her, and his expression had lost its humor so thoroughly that she wondered if it had ever been there in the first place. "Doctor Akagi has brought it to my attention that the Children are romantically involved with one another, to some extent. I'm curious as to why that wasn't in your report."

 _Damnit._ Misato didn't break his stare. "Sir, most of that romantic involvement happened in a hallway on-base and was reported by the pilots' own covert security detail. I didn't feel that needed to be a part of my domestic guidance reports."

"I'm referring more to the advice Doctor Akagi alleges you to have given the pilots."

 _Double damnit._ There was no point in denying it. Misato believed completely that Ritsuko had told their mutual superiors everything. There were likely phone recordings, too. That the sub-commander would confront her right now, in the middle of a stressful situation, was surprising, but not illogical—her mind was already fried. She had nowhere to run.

"I don't see how that matters." Misato crossed her arms. "My advice to Asuka and Shinji is completely personal."

"To what end?"

Misato sighed. "Can I be honest with you, sir?"

"Please do."

"I can't believe that you want these kids to be soldiers," she said. "I know that you have to make them be soldiers. I understand that there is no other way, and without making them do this, the entire world would be destroyed. I understand that. But I cannot for a second believe that you _want_ them to be soldiers."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because _I_ don't want them to be soldiers." She pointed at the screen, where the red rectangles had begun to outweigh the blue field. "We're asking these children to fight our nightmares, and they do it. They are good soldiers. If I gave them advice for anything, it was on how to at least be happier soldiers."

"You believed you were helping."

"I believe I am helping, sir," she said. "Wherever that leaves us, I'm confident in my choices."

"I appreciate that. I wish your confidence mattered more."

"What does that mean, sir?"

"It means that, assuming we all live through the next few hours, the Commander is going to decide whether or not his son is going to continue to live with you."

Misato could physically feel her stress level double. It felt very similar to a fist smashing her in the throat and gut and every other place on her body all at once. Seeing this, Fuyutsuki's features softened again. "If it's any help, Major, I agree with you. What we put these kids through is awful. But unfortunately, what happens to your pilots isn't up to me. It's up to Commander Ikari, and Commander Ikari is… well, Commander Ikari."

((()))

They sat in silence for a while so that the sound of one another's plug made a gentle, flowing feedback over the communications line. The silence was pleasant, like it had been in the moment two months prior when she first laid against him in the living room, and like it had been two weeks ago after she pinned him in the corridor. Shinji closed his eyes and listened, hearing her every so often as she adjusted in her own plug, and tried to imagine her. He imagined her mostly naked, as she was right now, but also as she had been in the living room, and in the corridor—the coppery tang of LCL and blood mixed with the heat of her lips—and the smell of her hair. Mostly he imagined her eyes, disembodied, intense, and continually boring into some place deep in his hindbrain.

"I don't hate you anymore," she said suddenly, her voice tinted by the radio's warble. "I used to hate you a lot, but now I'm getting over it."

Shinji didn't know how to respond to that. He found that despite how he was now closer to Asuka than ever before, actually speaking with her was still a challenge. Life with Asuka was a pendulum of extreme emotion and truth followed by cryptic conversation and hidden motivations. He hadn't found a sure way to figure her out, but he had managed to stumble tongue-first into her mouth on two occasions, and he desperately wanted to get there again, so he tried to choose his words with care.

"I don't hate you either, Asuka," he said, eventually.

"What do you hate least about me?" she said. "I mean, what's your favorite thing about me?"

That, Shinji realized, was a minefield. He needed information. "What do you mean?"

She huffed. "How hard do I have to ask for a compliment? Give me a compliment."

"Sorry."

"Idiot."

Shinji drummed his fingers on his control sticks, thinking. "I've got one," he said.

"It'd better be good."

"It is," he said. "When we first met, you thought I was an idiot."

"You say that like I don't anymore."

"I know, I know. But back then, you really, really didn't like me. Know what I thought of you?" She was silent, so he continued. "I thought you were the coolest person I had ever seen. I've never… I've never known what I was supposed to do with my life. I lived with my teacher and went to school and did what I was told, but I never had a goal. The only thing I really knew for certain was that I hated my father. And then I came here and they told me to pilot this thing and fight, and I still didn't feel like that was my place or whatever. But then I met you, and from first sight I knew you were great. Do you know how many kids our age look like they belong on an aircraft carrier, or belong in one of these plugs?"

"Just me," she said.

"Yeah! Asuka, you've made this job your whole life, and you're great at it. You're so far ahead of me in every part of it and I just want to catch up. But just being around you makes me, I don't know, better? I can feel myself getting better at this. Like the night we were on the veranda and you quizzed me on weapon deference—"

"Displacement."

"See? That! You're the coolest girl I know, Asuka, and I don't even know everything about you yet. A while back when you said thank you for saving you in the volcano, I wanted to tell you that you didn't have to thank me for that. I can't think of anyone more worth diving into a volcano for. I want you to help me, and I want to help you. As much as you'll let me, I mean."

Asuka was quiet for a moment.

"Alright," she said. "That was a good compliment. It was long, but that was pretty good."

Shinji smiled. "Thanks."

She was quiet for another moment.

"I'm gonna do a thing, now," she said. "So pay attention."

Shinji was about to ask what when Asuka's AUDIO ONLY signal turned into the greatest thing he had ever seen.

((()))

The red rectangles had filled the big screen, and if Misato was understanding the situation correctly, the human race was one little blue spot away from annihilation. Her fingers dug into Hyuga's headrest, her lungs knotted themselves inside her chest, and the whole world seemed to pause. The little blue spot held on, blinking, and then suddenly it was over. The red vanished back across the Magi icons like a cascading wave.

Misato breathed out, and she saw that Hyuga had done the same. "We're good, right?" she said to him, and he checked his console.

"The blue pattern is gone from our systems," he said. "Target is silent, ma'am."

Misato breathed out again, since her body didn't feel like she had sighed enough. She wondered if there would come a day when she could only breathe in life-affirming relieved sighs. She also wondered how many ulcers she had. Probably six. Did alcohol cause ulcers?

"Let's never do that again," she muttered.

"You and me both," Hyuga said, then stuttered. "I mean, 'ma'am.'"

Misato patted him on the shoulder and leaned against the desktop. Below them, Ritsuko was crawling out of the guts of Casper, tablet in hand. Her old roommate stood up, cracked her back, and looked around at the team. "Am I the only one who wants to start smoking now?" she said, eliciting a chorus of laughs from the technicians, mixed with scattered applause. Ritsuko waved up at her, and the wave went unreturned.

The way Misato figured it, selling your friend up the river to her superiors didn't warrant a friendly victory wave. "Hyuga, do we have comms back yet?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Get me the kids on audio." She watched as the signals were established, and spoke clearly. "The Angel is dead, guys. Score nine for the good guys."

"It's about damn time!" Asuka shot back. "I'm beginning to prune!"

"We're going to send out recovery teams to get you. I'll be here late tonight, so section two will take the three of you home."

"Understood," Shinji said. "Are you okay, Misato?"

She looked at Shinji's icon and smiled. "Yeah, kiddo. I'm okay. Try and get some sleep tonight."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And don't raid my wine this time."

"What!?" Asuka said. "Well, if you didn't leave it out for minors to get their hands on, maybe it wouldn't be such a problem! I've never met such an irresponsible woman in my life! No wonder there's no man that wants to—"

Misato motioned to Hyuga, who cut the line with a grin. "I'm not even going to ask," he said.

"Good call."

((()))

Shinji stood at the edge of the lake, his body covered by a towel given to him by one of the section two agents. In typical Nerv fashion, the team had only brought one rubber dinghy to recover each pilot, and decided to recover them one at a time. From his position, Shinji could see the dinghy pulling alongside Asuka's plug.

"Pilot Ikari."

He turned to see Rei. His friend wore a towel around her chest and another tied neatly around her hair. The sheer normality of it would have shocked him to laughter if she hadn't seemed so deadly serious.

"Hey Rei." He realized he had not radioed her at all over the past several hours, and felt immediately guilty about it. She had floated alone for that entire time.

And she seemed to have spent her time thinking. "Do you enjoy the Second Child's company?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "I like being around Asuka."

"Do you think she likes being around you?"

"I guess." Shinji's mind went to the glimpse of her he had seen earlier, all flesh and glory. He smiled involuntarily. "Pretty sure she does."

"Are you going to eat lunch with her from now on?"

Shinji shrugged. "Yeah, I think so."

Rei nodded, as if that had somehow solved something for her. "Goodnight, Pilot Ikari," she said, then walked away with one of the agents. Shinji watched her as she departed into a blackened sedan and pulled away. He stood for a moment longer before looking out into the lake, where the geofront's evening light silhouetted Asuka's plug. He saw the lid unseal and pull back, and the top of her head as she began to emerge.

An agent stepped into his line of sight. "Third Child, we're going to take you home now."

"But shouldn't we wait for Asuka?" he said, trying to find a way to look around the man's massive shoulders.

"Regulations demand that we transport you separately." The man gestured to another sedan. "Please get in the car."

((()))

Asuka retied her towel in the elevator. In her mind, it was bullshit that the goon squad hadn't even brought a change of clothes with them. Riding the elevator in a towel at nine o'clock at night was insane. She understood that no one else lived in their entire complex, but that didn't matter. It was the principle of the thing that mattered. What the hell kind of security did she actually have?

She got off the elevator and made her way to the apartment. She entered to find Shinji putting fish in Pen-Pen's bowl. The penguin watched, and gave her a look as she entered. The kid was still in his towel, too, tied around his waist. He looked up as she entered.

"How long ago did you get here?" she said, walking towards him.

"A little bit ago. I don't know why we couldn't ride togeth—"

And then she kissed him. Shinji was shocked and suddenly didn't know what to do with his hands. The can of fish hit the tile and he improvised, grabbing her back with both hands. Her towel came undone and started to fall away. He fumbled with it, trying to keep it on her. She knocked his hands away and pushed him against the refrigerator.

Asuka had no idea what she was doing, but she knew that she liked him thinking about this. She thought back to her time with Kaji, stargazing on the deck of the _Over the Rainbow_. 'I'm ready for it all,' she had said then, in the part of that memory that she had tried so hard to forget out of embarrassment. 'Kissing, and even what comes after!'

Kaji hadn't looked at her, and it had killed her. He had said she was a kid, that she wasn't ready for anything like that, which was idiotic. She couldn't do that, but she could kill a demi-god with her hands? Who the hell was Kaji to say what she could and couldn't do? Did he lose sleep because his dreams were polluted with the death shrieks of Angels?

But now there was this boy her own age, standing in front of her, and he was definitely looking at her.

Shinji tried to swallow but had no spit. He, similarly, had no idea what to do, but was certain he didn't want it to stop until he died. He gazed at her chest. What was he supposed to do here? Was he allowed to touch her?

"Grab me," she said, her other hand suddenly on his face.

He wanted to. He desperately, definitely wanted to. But it also terrified him. In the end, that last urge won out.

"No," he said.

"What?" She wasn't all there, caught up in the moment.

"No," he said, more firmly. He placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back, gently, and inhaled.

Asuka frowned. "What the hell?" She grabbed her towel off the kitchen floor, wrapped it back around her shoulders. "What's wrong with you?"

He stepped away from the refrigerator, looking at her. "It's not right."

"When the hell is the right time? When do we…" Asuka trailed off, tying her towel around her again. She looked away. "So you didn't mean it."

"Mean what?"

"What you said earlier. In the plug."

Shinji frowned. "I don't know what that means. I meant every word."

"Then why won't you do this?" she said, turning to him. Her face was red, at a step between screaming and crying. What he did next would likely determine which way it went.

So he took a leap of faith.

Shinji rushed forward and hugged her around the shoulders, pulling her in tight. She gave a muffled "what!?" that died away in his shoulder.

Then she hugged him back.

They stood for a long moment, no words exchanged between them, no apologies and no acknowledgement from him to her that he heard her sobbing.

When it was over, they parted, and he didn't look at her while she wiped her eyes.

"I like you a lot," he said, in the silence.

She laughed. "Is that what you call it?"

"What would you call it, then?" he asked, looking up at her. She was smiling, her eyes clear, her face more beautiful than he had ever seen it.

"Such a little boy about everything," she said.

((()))

One highlight of a non-standard Angel attack was the ease of cleanup. It was a lot easier to scrape a few wall seams back together and double-check a computer system than it was to reconstruct a few city blocks. Misato was done by 0100, which was great timing. She bid Hyuga a good night and left through the command center's main access hall, taking her walk down to the elevator. She hit the call button and waited.

The doors opened and revealed a familiar face.

"Hello again," said Kaji. "What a coincidence!"

Misato stepped inside. "Is it really?"

"You don't think I engineer elevator meetups, do you?" he said.

"You used to."

Kaji raised an eyebrow. "Is that a sexual innuendo? From the great Major Katsuragi?"

Misato smiled, though she tried to stop herself. "Don't get used to it."

"No, you can't hide that from me. It counted. Going up?"

"Yes." Misato leaned against the wall and tried to focus on the door. For the first time in the day, she finally felt the exhaustion. "Hey, Kaji. Tell me. Do you know anything about the Commander's opinion of his son?"

"He doesn't talk about him," Kaji said. "Which I suppose says something in itself. Why?"

Misato shrugged. "You probably already know this, but he's contemplating separating Shinji and Asuka from my care."

"Are my activities just an open secret to everyone?"

"I'm sorry, are they not supposed to be?"

Kaji grumbled. "Yes, I've heard about that."

"From Ritsuko, I imagine."

"Oh, no. Are you two fighting again?"

"Fighting implies I'm ever going to communicate with her again."

Kaji sighed. "It should be noted that the Commander hasn't made up his mind yet. He might still leave them in your charge."

"Fat chance of that," she said.

"Hey, Misato. You did the right thing." Kaji shook his head. "Despite what trouble their little relationship might or might not cause, it was worth it. They deserve a shot at happiness."

Misato nodded. "I know. I just wish I could keep them."

Kaji turned toward her, hands in his pockets. "It doesn't matter where they live, Misato. Both the children and soldiers in them belong to you. They don't have anyone else."

"Kaji," she said, trying to find the words in his stupid cocksure smile that made her see him as he had been, before eight years, an Inspector's uniform, and the weariness of the world had turned him into this new guy. "You know how to talk smooth, don't you?"

"Does that mean you'll have that drink?" he said.

The elevator came to a stop and Misato stepped out, heels clicking as she strode into the parking garage. "Maybe," she said over her shoulder, "but don't get your hopes up!"

"Wouldn't think of it, Major!" he called after her.

The doors closed.

((()))

"Your room is tiny," Asuka said, standing in the middle of the floor, her arms outstretched. "I can almost touch both walls at once."

Shinji sat on his bed. "It used to be a closet," he said, strategically leaving out the part where he only slept there because she had run him out of his room when she moved in.

Not that it mattered. Asuka picked up on it. "It had to happen," she said. "The best pilot gets the biggest room. It's basically protocol at this point."

She flopped down on the bed next to him and stretched. Since their moment in the kitchen, she had pulled on a t-shirt and shorts—a tragic loss in Shinji's mind. On the other hand, she was laying on his bed, and that was as anxiety-inducing as it was incredible.

"I'm going to sleep in here tonight," she said.

"Like when we were in tandem training," Shinji said.

"No, idiot. Do I have to spell out everything for you?"

"I mean…"

Asuka scoffed, sat up. "This is totally different. Did you get to put your arms around me when we were in training?"

"No," Shinji said.

"Exactly. Did I want to sleep with you in training?"

"No."

"Exactly. Did you get to kiss me when we were in training? Aside from that stupid pervert thing that still makes me want to hit you."

Shinji got red in the face. "I was joking! I was joking when I said that."

"Were you, though?"

"No," he said, defeated.

Asuka grinned. She had opened her mouth to speak when the sound of the front door swishing open reached her ears. Shinji heard it at the same instant, and the two of them looked up in tandem, then at each other.

"We're dead!" Shinji whispered.

"Shut up!" she hissed back. "Turn off the light!"

"No!" he said. "Just go to your room!"

"Shut up!" she repeated. She heard Misato throwing her keys down on the kitchen table, and the muffled sounds of penguin squawks. She turned to Shinji and pushed him down on the bed. "Get under the covers!"

"Asuka—"

"SHH!"

She leapt up and smacked the light switch off, then dived through the dark into the bed, landing on Shinji's elbow with a grunt. Bedsprings creaked as she scrambled under the covers. "Just stay quiet!" she said.

((()))

Misato pulled a beer from the refrigerator and walked towards her bedroom. She was about to enter when she heard the hissed, low words and slam of a body hitting a mattress. Frowning, she turned and walked down the hall. "Asuka?" she said, sliding open the door to the Second Child's bedroom.

Empty.

Slowly, Misato turned around and opened the closet door. The darkness was near absolute, but after a moment of letting her eyes adjust, she began to make out two lumps beneath the covers, each trying very, very hard to pretend to be asleep.

She knew what the superior officer and legal guardian in her should have done, which was call them out and dress them down. This kind of behavior shouldn't have been tolerated. Ritsuko would have had a cow if she saw this.

That more than anything else was what made Misato close the door again and walk away without comment. She had no idea how many more days her charges would live under the same roof. If they wanted to sleep in the same bed, that was their prerogative. Ritsuko and the Commander could shove it.

Misato sat out on the veranda, sipping her beer in the cool hours of the very early morning, the lights of the city spread out before her.


	12. Chapter 12

The city awakened with a quake of growing buildings, and the Children woke with it. This was only their fifth morning together but it felt like the five hundredth. It felt partly like their time in tandem training, in the parts of it where there had been no bickering and only music to fill the space between them, or just the dark of the night, where each of them had laid still, pretending to be asleep, where even their breathing was synchronized.

Shinji, as always, woke up with the sounds of the cycling buildings. He shrugged his way out from under the covers and stood up on the bed, then climbed across her and hopped down.

The Second Child grumbled and rolled over on her chest, face buried in the pillow, waiting for the shaking to cease. "I hate this city," she said.

Shinji said nothing. He grabbed a towel from his closet and set it next to Asuka, on the bed. She sat up after a moment, hair askance, eyes half-shut. "I hate this bed more," she said. "How do you sleep on something so small?"

 _With your elbow in my spine_ , Shinji did not say. "It takes some getting used to."

She grabbed the towel and left the room. "Well, hurry up, Third. I'm not saving any hot water."

((()))

Misato sat at the kitchen table in her nightshirt, watching her charges fly through their morning routine. Shinji swung around Asuka, moving utensils from stove to countertop in a cooking frenzy. Two meals were being prepared at once, both breakfast and lunch. As he finished elements of lunch, he handed them to Asuka who then packed each piece into its respective bento box. They ate as they worked and spoke around bites of toast, studying for a quiz.

"September 20," Asuka said.

"N-bombing of Old Tokyo." Shinji scooped rice into a baggie, then another. "The city is quarantined two days later."

He moved away and Asuka closed the bags, then dropped them into the boxes. "February 14, 2001," she said.

"Valentine Treaty," he said.

"Wrong." Asuka snapped the bentos shut and set them together on the table, then moved away into the living room. "Valentine _Cease-Fire_."

"Hey, I wanted to—" Misato started.

"I've got it," Shinji told her, dropping a plate into place in front of her, a steaming breakfast atop it. Then he disappeared into the living room, too. "I thought he said treaty!"

Misato shrugged and dug in, severing her omelet into bites.

"The Treaty caused the Cease-Fire. They aren't the same thing!" Asuka blew back into the kitchen, backpack on her shoulder, and started dumping the cooking utensils into the dishwasher. Shinji followed soon after, a bag of fish in his hand. He dropped one into Pen-Pen's bowl, got a happy squawk, and left.

Asuka called over her shoulder. "Do you have cleaning duty tonight?"

"No! You?"

"Not until tomorrow!"

Misato looked up. "You guys both have—"

"Synch tests tonight," Asuka finished. "We know."

Shinji walked back in and handed Asuka her shoes. "What was that thing with Hikari yesterday?" he asked. "She seemed mad."

"Oh, she's just being Japanese about me not eating with her anymore," Asuka said. "I guess it's a big deal to her that I sit with her."

"She's a good friend," he said.

"She's okay I guess." Asuka shrugged. "She didn't yell or anything. She's just being difficult."

Shinji grinned at her. "She on the squashing list?"

Misato's eyes widened. "The what-now?"

"Hardly," Asuka said, ignoring her. "That's reserved for your little stooges. And you on the bad days."

Misato started to talk again, the last bite of her food suspended in the air on her fork, but Shinji cut her off, swinging in and scooping the empty plate out from under her. The plate landed in the dishwasher. Asuka's heel slipped into her shoe, then knocked the dishwasher's door closed. Shinji flipped the machine on and moved past her.

"Boxes," Asuka said, and Shinji picked them up.

They breezed out the front door, rapid-firing quiz notes and gossip back and forth, and suddenly the door whooshed shut and they were gone. Misato sat in the kitchen, alone with her penguin, fork in hand.

"Later," she muttered, and ate the last of her omelet.

((()))

Toji Suzuhara flopped down onto the bench at lunch. "We need to talk."

Kensuke paused mid-bite. He felt ambushed. "About what?"

"Whadda think? About Shinji!"

"What about him?"

"Oh, come on!" Toji crossed his arms, which was his move when he felt that a situation should be obvious to everyone around him when in fact it existed almost entirely in his own cerebellum. He sat back against the bench with a defiant thud. "You've gotta be blind. I swear, I'm the only guy with his head on straight, y'know?"

Kensuke was confused. He decided to take his bite. Toji continued.

"I mean, we invite the guy into our friend group—and I know that group is pretty much just you and me, but whatever—and he was cool for a bit. I mean, he had to take his lumps and all, but we've always done beat-ins."

"No we haven't."

"Well, whatever! Point is, we let the guy in and he was pretty cool. We got along with him."

"Sure, after you hit him."

"Whatever. He brought us on that aircraft carrier and everything, and you got to see that fighter jet."

"YAK-38 Custom."

"Yeah, man! See!" Toji leaned in, importantly. "Point is, he's done stuff for us and we've done stuff for him, so he should eat with us."

Kensuke frowned. "That's what this is about?"

"God! Yeah, of course! He's been eating with that red devil for the past week! It's getting ridiculous! And then today, right before I come down here, I go in to ask him if he wants to eat with the real men and I see he's even got Ayanami eating with them!"

Kensuke looked up. "Ayanami is eating with him?"

"Yeah, man! And he turned me down again! I mean, I didn't totally _ask_ him straight-up, but I know he would have!" Toji leaned back again. Thud. "Total crap. It's all her fault."

Kensuke waited. The cicadas chirped. He waited some more.

"Did Ayanami say anything?" he asked, figuring that enough time had lapsed so that his desperation would not show.

He was wrong.

"What is it with you and her?" Toji sat up again, his finger jabbing Kensuke in the shoulder. "You've got a thing for Ayanami, don't you?"

"Hey, c'mon!"

"Man, I see it. I ain't blind. You're ogling her naughty bits!"

Kensuke shoved him off. "Back off, man!"

Toji backed off. "But seriously, you're not going to try and eat with her again, are you?"

"Probably not. She was pretty final the first time. It doesn't get much clearer than 'No.'"

"No kidding." Toji thudded back again. "Well, that's good. At least you know better than to ditch the group. I'm the same way, man. You won't ever catch me eating with a girl. That's stupid."

Kensuke picked at his lunch. "Sure, man."

The cicadas chirped. Toji looked at his friend, then at his friend's food, then back at his friend.

"So you gonna eat all of that, or can I get in on it?" he said.

((()))

Their desks were pushed together into a triangle, Shinji across from Asuka across from Rei. A trifecta of pilots, all at lunch. Asuka was not thrilled.

"I had figured we'd be eating together," she said, her cheek resting on her hand. Her eyes simmered on a tired glare.

"We are eating together," Shinji said. "Just with Rei, too."

Rei looked at Asuka, then at Shinji. "Am I causing a problem?"

"No. No, you're not." Shinji smiled, trying to smooth the situation. He could feel Asuka's pent-up aggression and wanted to head it off. "This is great," he said. "Just great. Really, really great. Isn't it great, Asuka?"

She turned her tired glare to him. "Great is a word," she said.

Shinji forced a laugh, then shoved a wad of food into his mouth to avoid speaking. Rei ate as well. Asuka held her stance, her food untouched. Class 8-A's teacher, taking the lunch period as a work time, was calling students up individually to hand back their graded quizzes. Asuka knew he was doing it alphabetically, and had decided that she didn't have much to say until one particular name was called.

"Ayanami?" the teacher said.

Rei got up and walked to the front of the room. Asuka immediately leaned over into Shinji's personal space. "What the hell is the big idea, Third?"

Shinji stammered. "I thought it'd be nice if she ate with us!"

"Yeah, no kidding. We had a good morning. Why?" Asuka grabbed him by the collar. "Why!?"

"She's our copilot, right?" he said. "We ought to know her better. Plus, she's my friend."

"What, you going to invite all your other friends, too? Are you _trying_ to get dumped?"

"It's not like that!" Shinji knocked her hand away. "Why do you dislike her so much, anyway?"

Asuka smirked. "What's to like? She's a no-personality, wind-up pilot who does whatever she's told."

Shinji did not share her smirk. "That's cruel," he said, and went back to his food.

Asuka's smirk died. She was trying to think of a comeback when she spotted Rei approaching. She went back to looking as fist-on-cheek bored as she could.

"How did you do?" she said.

"I did well," Rei replied.

Asuka opened her mouth to ask for a concrete percentage, but Shinji cut her off. "That's good to hear, Rei," he said. "I've got a good feeling about it. How about you, Asuka?"

The look he gave her managed to be both pleading and demanding—it begged her to be nice, but told her not to be a jerk. It made her smile. He wanted considerate? She could do considerate.

"I'd rather not talk about me," she said, for the first time ever. "Wondergirl, have you given any more thought to your little boyfriend?"

"Asuka—" Shinji started.

"No, no. Let her speak." Asuka looked at her. "So what's the deal? Has he talked to you at all recently?"

Rei looked at her. "I don't have a boyfriend," she said.

"But I thought that's what Aida was." Asuka opened her bento. All this activity had finally roused her appetite. "Remember, a while ago? All that lunch business? I'm surprised you're not eating with him."

"Asuka, stop it," Shinji said. "Rei, Asuka's just kidding with you."

"Horaki," the teacher called.

Asuka shrugged. "Believe what you want, Wondergirl. But it's clear that you like him."

Rei stared at her, and suddenly Asuka didn't want to make any more jokes. Two red-hot eyes boring into her soul had an effect on her humor. "Is it obvious?" Rei said.

It was not, but Asuka was too floored by the admission to let that show. "Uh, yeah," she managed. "Totally."

"Rei, do you actually like Kensuke?" Shinji said.

"I think that I might. When he asked me to eat food with him, I was not sure."

"But what do you think now?" Shinji asked.

"I think," Rei said, "that I like the idea of Kensuke Aida eating food with me. I think he would be a good friend. We have similar interests."

"Jesus, that's awkward," Asuka muttered. Shinji nudged her in the shin with his toe. This earned him a kick to the knee, but she quieted nonetheless.

"What kind of interests?" Shinji said, wincing.

"He likes military equipment. I could talk about that with him."

"That's not an interest you share," Asuka said. "That's his interest. You just happen to do the thing that he likes. It's not like you have a choice or anything."

Rei nodded, seeming to take that in. "He likes camping," she said.

"Yeah," Shinji said, not sure if she was asking or not.

"Then we have that in common."

Asuka laughed. "When have you ever gone camping?"

"Six years ago," Rei said, without pause.

Shinji looked like he wanted to push that subject, but the teacher called his name and he hopped up to leave.

In his absence, Asuka focused on Ayanami. "But everything aside, you like him."

"Yes," Rei said. "I like him."

"Then date the guy," Asuka said.

"I cannot."

"'I cannot,'" Asuka muttered. "Why not? Just 'eat food with him' like you want to, then kiss him and date him!"

Rei shook her head. "It would not be allowed."

"What does that mean?" Asuka said. When the response wasn't immediate, she smacked her hand on the table. "Hey! Not allowed? What are you talking about?"

"Commander Ikari doesn't like pilots being romantic." Rei's expression was level but not neutral. "He does not approve."

Asuka's frown became a scowl. "What the hell does that mean, Wondergirl?"

Rei went back to her lunch and Asuka realized she was going to get nothing more out of her copilot.

"You were right about that India question, Asuka. It was the only one I missed." Shinji sat back down and glanced between the two of them. "See? This is great! I'm glad we did this."

((()))

_Commander Ikari: It has come to my attention that you are contemplating the removal of the Second and Third Children from my care. This is of great concern to me. I feel that the Children's combat performance and mental stability is aided by the experience of living together, and that removing them from that shared experience presents an obstacle to the wellbeing of them personally and to humanity as a whole. Additionally—_

Misato stopped typing and had a sip of her beverage. The cafeteria was nearly empty, save for a few orange jumpsuits hanging out by the coffee machines. She always preferred to take her lunch in the techs' cafeteria. Shift workers ate faster, left sooner, and didn't know who she was. Work tended not to follow her down here, and that gave her time to catch up on her emails.

She stared at her laptop, trying to frame her next thought. She needed evidence—reasons that he would listen to. She also needed his actual email address, if he had one. It had never been made available to her. Hyuga might be able to find it, given time. Still, she wanted the words to be spot-on before she crossed that bridge.

Additionally. Additionally. Additionally? Additionally.

Misato smirked.

_Additionally, you are a crappy dad. You do not know your son, you do not care to know your son, and if you were my dad I would hate you, too. Because of your aforementioned crappiness, you should not be able to make decisions for your son or for Asuka, who is not your child anyway. Kiss my ass. Signed: Major M. Katsuragi._

"That's one way to lose a job."

Misato jumped and whipped her head around. Kaji stood over her, smirk on his face, tray in hand. She narrowed her eyes, but her mouth grinned out of reflex. "It'd almost be worth it, though," she said.

"Almost," he conceded. "Mind if I sit?"

Misato shrugged, her finger finding the 'delete' key. "Go ahead."

He went ahead. "Drinking your lunch?" he said, gesturing to her cup.

"Don't be a jerk." She didn't look up from her computer. "Also, yes."

"I wanted to talk with you about today's experiment."

"Yeah, the swapping thing?" Misato said. "I don't know how swapping Rei for Shinji helps us learn anything new. Unit 00 and Unit 01 are both hot, glitchy messes. What a newsflash."

"Well, then you'll be interested to know that the experiment has changed."

Misato looked at him. "How?"

"First: this is you-didn't-hear-it-from-me territory, so don't let on that you know it."

"Shut up and tell me."

Kaji took a breath. "Dr. Akagi is currently overhauling the plug interface of Unit 02 instead of Unit 00."

"No." Misato pushed her laptop aside. "You mean they want to test Shinji in Unit 02? Then that means Asuka—"

"Yes," Kaji said. "Asuka in Unit 01."

"What for? How does that help anyone?" Misato shook her head. "Units 00 and 01 are both whacky Evas. Prototype. Test Type. I understand wanting to see the differences between them, but Unit 02 is a production model. It doesn't have kinks. It'll work fine with Shinji in the plug."

"Supposedly, that's correct," Kaji said, finally eating some of his lunch.

"So then the only odd data will come from putting Asuka in Unit 01. They want to see how she'll react to it."

Kaji shrugged. "Or how it will react to her."

"Don't say things like that," Misato said. "You know I don't like spooky talk."

"Sure, sure. I also like to pretend it didn't come alive and murder a nightmare in the middle of a street."

"I'm serious, Kaji. What is the point of this?"

Kaji wasn't the kind of man who looked away from people as he contemplated a response. He stared at her now, chin on the back of one hand, thinking. "I believe the Commander is testing them both," he said, eventually. "He wants to introduce a problem into their lives. I think he already knows the first half of that email you're writing. He has likely developed a lot of those same ideas. Sure, the kids might work better if they are together, but he has no proof. This is him deciding if you're right or not."

"Great," she said, crossing her arms. "And what's the threshold? What do they need to do so that he'll keep them together?"

"Conservatively? Fifty percent synchronicity with each unit."

"That's insane! It took Shinji two months to hit that, even in his own Eva!"

Kaji nodded. "Yes, but like you said: this test is more about Asuka. Can she wrangle the oni?"

"I have no idea." Misato leaned forward and thudded her head against the table. She suddenly felt very tired. "Do I tell the kids? Is it worth it?"

"I doubt it." Kaji stood up, his appetite gone. "They'll be forced into it either way. Let them approach it with clear heads. Let them be children."

Misato laughed. It was short and without humor. "Yeah," she said, "sure."

((()))

Unit 01 was stupid.

At least, that's how Asuka had come to look at it. The damn thing had refused to start right away. Now she was soaking in the plug, waiting for the techs to debug its pilot interface. Would it have killed them to do this earlier?

She crossed her arms and sat. In the meantime, she looked around the plug. So this was where Shinji spent his combat time. Aesthetic-wise, it didn't look any different to her own plug. Each Evangelion was designed with equipment synergy in mind, and even though combat systems design had advanced between this violet garbage dump and her own no-doubt superior Unit 02, the basic pilot-machine interface hadn't been altered since the prototype days.

Still, it felt different, like being inside someone else's skin. The walls felt alien, the deactivated screens devoid of any familiarity beyond the surface. She was not meant to sit here.

"Attempt number two," said Dr. Akagi, over the comm. "Activating in three. Two. One."

The screens washed rainbow, then black and white, then stark red. The color held for a second, then two, then it became apparent that it wasn't going to fade. Asuka sighed and keyed her mic. "Another glitch. Startup phase 3-A. I'm getting redshift feedback in here. What idiot programmed this?"

No response. She keyed again. "Is anyone even listening to me?"

Nothing.

This was ridiculous. She rolled her eyes. "Look, guys-"

_Lookguys._

The words flashed through her mind, a continuous stream, like a mirror playback into her skull.

_Isanyoneevenlisteningtome._

_Redshiftfeebackwhatidiotprogrammedthiswhatidiotwhatidiotwhatidiot._

It spoke with her voice but at a lower decibel, the words jumbled together in a morass. The more it spoke, the more the mirror became distorted, her words deepening, becoming a basal drone.

_Listeningtomelisteningtomelisteningtome._

_Idiotlisteningtome._

"What the hell?" Asuka keyed up an abort sequence on her control yoke, trying to sever the synchronization feed. No dice.

_Whatanidiot._

_Idiotevenlookingtome._

Asuka looked up from her controls and saw her fore screen morph, the glass contorting, bending towards her, features appearing from the other side like hands beneath a taut belly. Something rolled beneath that strained glass, a tilted head lifting its face. Asuka pulled back, hands up—

The screens flashed, the red giving way to white, then to green, then to an accurate feed of life outside the Unit. She saw the testing chamber, its white walls, and the observation box directly ahead. Her hands were clad in violet steel, her shoulders broad and strong. She could feel the steel of her armor, the strength of cold tendons—the wrath of god in all its fury.

The voices, and the face, were all gone.

"What the hell just happened?" she shouted.

Inside the booth, she could see Dr. Akagi at a terminal, listening to her. "We lost signal with you for a moment. Anything unusual happen?"

"Yes!" Asuka said.

"Like what?"

"There was—" Asuka floundered, the words leaving her as soon as she found them. The whole thing would sound ridiculous anyway. "I mean, whatever. I don't want to talk about it. Unit 01 is stupid anyway."

Akagi shrugged. "Very well. We'll begin the experiment now."

((()))

The blood smelled like her hair.

He had gotten used to the smell of her hair. It was the first thing he had noticed about her months prior, in that awkward moment in the living room. It smelled wonderful and alive and vaguely threatening. It had come to mean the world to him, a signifier that someone in his life cared enough about him to be that intoxicatingly close.

He was so preoccupied by the smell that he didn't notice the way his subconscious called the LCL blood.

"Shinji, we're going to start the activation sequence now." Ritsuko's voice filtered in through the comm. "Because we've reformatted the core interface, we'll have to bring you in slowly. There might be some interference, so we're going to put you in a limbo-circuit synch for a minute in order to calibrate."

"Okay," said Shinji, not sure what any of that meant. "What do I do?"

"Just sit still and keep us apprised of your situation."

"Okay."

The plug thrummed. The screens went into a ready-state, then lit up into a blasé green that suffused the liquid around him. He drummed his fingers on the control yokes, feeling ghost tingles of a larger body slip into his mind—like hints of some greater potential laying just outside of his skin. It was weird, but not entirely unpleasant.

The green shifted. It yellowed and rotted. The light became autumnal, dead. Shinji could feel the LCL swirl around him, as if a current had developed in the plug. But that was impossible. He looked around, half expecting to see something swim past him.

Then he looked down and saw the door.

It had no frame or floor or discernible knob. In fact, it resembled little more than a blackened monolith, but he knew that it was a door. Something in its bearing and the frame of his mind indicated it with an intensity that denied it being conceived as anything else. It was a door. He watched it, and it opened, soundlessly turning aside to reveal a rectangle of empty crimson beyond.

Lieutenant Ibuki spoke to him. "Shinji, we're reading heart rate fluctuations from your plug suit. Is everything alright?"

Shinji didn't respond. He gripped the yokes. He stared at the door. He felt the liquid around him chill as something moved past, invisible, diving down the plug. He heard a faint warble on the edge of his hearing, a wavering whimper in a language he could not know. He strained to hear it, and the sound became that of multiple voices, some high, others low. They cooed and cried.

The door slammed shut, the crack of a snapped bone that silenced the whimpers. Activation began. Colors kaleidoscoped around him, and in the successive waves, the door disappeared. When the activation finished, Shinji could feel Unit 02 around him, and knew that he was once again alone in the plug.

"Shinji?" Ibuki said, again. Her face appeared in front of him.

"Yeah," he said. "I mean, yes. I'm here. Things are fine. Totally normal. How are you?"

Ibuki smiled. "We're going to start the test, now. Just try to synch like you would in your own Unit, okay?"

Shinji nodded. He closed his eyes and tried to slip away into something greater.

((()))

Misato sat in the control booth, the back of her chair pressed to her chest, and watched the test unfold. Both kids had experienced hiccups on start-up, but now they were fifteen minutes into the test and things were going well, at least as far as she could tell. The numbers breakdown—ego fluctuation, hindbrain variance, and the all-important synchronicity ratio—would come later. For now, she could judge their faces. The visual feed to each plug showed concentrated, serene soldiers, which was all she could ask for.

She opened up her laptop and logged into the control box's local network. "Lieutenant Ibuki," she said, "could you please stream test data to my screen?"

Ibuki looked at her, then at her direct superior. Misato caught Ritsuko's expression out of the corner of her eye. The scientist looked perturbed. Good.

"You can watch it on the monitor," Ritsuko said.

Misato pointed at her own laptop and smiled, pleasantly. "I'll take it here. Lieutenant?"

Ritsuko didn't move, but Ibuki sent the feed anyway-a friendly reminder that one of them held a rank, and the other one was a scientist. _Quid pro quo, bitch._ Misato winked at her old friend and turned back to the laptop.

The feed was a jumbled mess of nonsense. Any graph relating to an Evangelion always made Misato think of the Gordian knot. There were some things in metaphysics that numbers just could not render easily. Thoughts were at the top of that list.

Still, Misato knew enough about basic graph design to judge the success of the experiment. "Variance is minimal," she said. "Unless I'm reading this very wrong, Doctor Akagi, it would seem that my two pilots have only dropped ten synchronization percentage points from their most recent scores in their own units."

"You're reading it correctly," Ritsuko said. "Surprisingly."

"Which would mean," she continued, "that each of them are above fifty percent synchronization."

"Also correct. What is your point, Major?"

Major? Someone was getting angry. Misato grinned and stood, shutting her laptop. "Just wanted clarification. You all have a happy synch test, alright?"

She left before Ritsuko could formulate a comeback, which made it all the more satisfying.

((()))

Toji Suzuhara flopped down onto the bench. "We ought to just call ourselves 'The Abandoned Twins.'"

Kensuke dropped his sandwich onto his tray. "Not this again."

"I'm serious! It's the sixth day and he's still not eating with us. I swear, if I have to go up there—"

"Kensuke Aida," said a soft voice.

Both boys turned around. Rei Ayanami stood behind them, lunch tray in hand. She looked directly at Kensuke, seemingly ignorant of Toji's presence.

"Hey," he managed.

"Would you like to eat lunch with me?" she said.

The words sounded like they came from another person, but the red eyes staring at him gave them solidity. His head was nodding before his brain gave the order.

"Absolutely."

Rei looked around. "Where do we go?" she said. "Do we eat here?"

"Nope!" Kensuke hopped up. "Follow me!"

The two departed, walking around the building toward the track field and the bleachers. Left behind by himself, Toji thudded back into the bench.

"Well, what the hell am I supposed to do now?" he said, to no one at all.

((()))

They left late from school. It had been her day for cleaning duty and he had waited with her, helping where he could and not helping when she caught him. It was her cleaning duty, she had explained, and she didn't need his charity. He apologized but didn't stop. Eventually she had stopped complaining and let him do as he wished.

Now they walked home as the sunlight dissipated behind the skyscrapers and defense towers. They did not hold hands, but they did not have to. There was a comfortable air between them, an ease that neither had experienced with another person before, and that neither of them wanted to ruin with touch or talk when none was necessary.

They passed storefronts and bus stations, parks and houses. Shinji glanced into the places they passed, seeing brief glimpses of the faces that inhabited them, the children and men and women of the city. Asuka watched him. "Why do you do that?" she said.

"What?" he said.

"Look at them."

"Oh. I don't know."

She frowned. "Do better."

"Okay," he said, and tried to find an answer. "When I first got here, Misato drove me outside the city, up onto a hill." He turned and pointed, indicating the direction of the spot despite it being too far to see. "She showed me the city, and we watched it grow. She told me that this was my home, and that I'd saved everyone in it."

Asuka watched him, letting him continue.

"So, since then I've always thought about them. The people around us, I mean. It's hard to keep them in mind when we're fighting—they're all tucked away in bunkers and basements and all. But when we're down here, walking around? You can see them all." He looked away for a moment. "That probably sounds really stupid."

"No," Asuka said. "It doesn't sound stupid. I wish I could do that."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. But don't let that go to your head."

Shinji laughed. "Sure, okay."

They reached the turnoff for home, but Asuka didn't turn with him. He stopped. "You're not coming home?" he asked.

Asuka shook her head. "No. I've got a medical exam scheduled for tonight. Full physical."

"Oh, I didn't know that."

"That's because I didn't tell you, turd."

"Yeah," Shinji said, not knowing what else to say. He started to walk away.

Asuka sighed. "Hey, idiot," she said, making him turn. "Come over here."

Shinji came over to her. She grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him. She held it for a moment, then pushed him away. "So stupid," she said.

"I know," he said, smiling.

She spun around and walked off with a skip in her step that made him watch her until she turned out of sight.

((()))

Shinji reached the apartment a few minutes later. He keyed the lock and slipped through the front door, kicking his shoes off into a neat pairing next to the welcome mat. "Misato, I'm home!" he shouted, failing to notice that his shoes were alone in the entryway. "Asuka's headed to the Geo Front, so I guess I'll just cook for two then!"

He walked into the kitchen, shrugging his backpack off as he walked. He had just begun to reach for his apron when he realized he wasn't alone in the room.

The Third Child froze, eyes locked with the man who sat at the kitchen table.

"Shinji," said Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki. "Sit down."


	13. Chapter 13

Gendo Ikari sat in the heat of a hotel room. It was December of 2003 and Germany was unseasonably sweltering, the kind of heat that made his black socks stick to his flesh as he pulled them off. The management had included a complimentary oscillating fan by the window. It chugged away, occasionally regarding him with a breeze of stale air.

Gendo threw his socks into the open suitcase across from him and fell back onto the bed. "It's hot," he said.

"Air conditioning is hard to come by on your salary. You're a poor civil servant, remember?"

Her voice drifted over the sound of running water. It was light and would only grow lighter with time in his memory. Gendo smiled. "I doubt anyone believes that," he said. "Your old professor certainly didn't."

"Kozo is very observant. I hope you weren't too mean to him."

"I doubt it was anything I said that convinced him." Gendo sat up and pulled his shirt off. More skin-peeling, more frustration. It too landed in a heap. "I took him into the cavern, then Akagi and I showed him the prototype. I thought the threat alone would convince him, but he called our bluff. It was whatever you said to him afterwards that convinced him."

"Glad to hear it."

Gendo frowned. "I never asked. What did you say to him?"

The water shut off. She stepped out into the heat, towel around her neck, feet in hotel-provided slippers. "When you showed him the prototype, you showed him a proof of concept. You showed him what we can do and what we're trying to do. That didn't work. He's never cared about what you can do. He cares about the why."

"I told him why he should do it," Gendo said.

"You threatened to kill him if he told anyone." She smiled her you-are-so-dense smile. "That's not a 'why.' That's blackmail and intimidation."

Gendo grinned and shrugged. "I thought that was my job."

"Your job is to do everything I can't be bothered with." She came closer, her wet body directly in front of him, the smell of her soap in his nostrils. "I'm the scientist. You're a thug in a lab coat."

He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her onto the bed with him. She shifted as they tumbled, ending up atop him, their eyes inches apart. Her lips touched his, but he pushed her away.

"But really," he said. "What did you tell the old man?"

"I told him why we're doing it. You and me." She smiled. "That I want to see a better world for my son, that I want to learn more about the world than any woman before, and that I want to take a bad situation and make it into a monument."

Gendo frowned. "And what did you say I wanted?"

"Nothing." She touched her nose to his. "You're an odd one, Mr. Rokubungi. I don't think I could sum up your motivations if I tried. Way too complicated."

"That might be true," he said, though he knew it to be false. He wasn't complicated, and he likely never would be. All he wanted was to be near her, to have her and to never let her go. In doing so he would give her all of himself, forever, until the Earth, the moon, and the stars were all gone.

She shifted on top of him, sitting up. The towel dropped away. "It is hot in here," she said.

"Yes, but it has a nice view," he said.

"Never say that again. That was so beneath you."

"Yes, dear." He grinned. "You know, the conference isn't until tonight. And this might be our last time alone together for a few months."

"You don't say?" She leaned into him, chest to chest, lips to lips. In moments of loneliness during all the hard years to come, he would return to that sweltering hotel it in his mind's eye, to that place where there had only been two people in his whole world. One of his few perfect moments.

He lost her two hundred and two days later.

Eleven years after that, he ruined her son's life.

((()))

"Shinji," said Fuyutsuki. "Sit down."

The kitchen was the last place Shinji would have ever expected to see his father's adjutant. The sheer contrast of his uniform with the wood of the table and the cool hue of the walls made it seem as if the room was repelled by his very presence. In his time at Nerv, he had only spoken to Fuyutsuki in groups—briefings, mostly. To have someone so foreign to him standing in a place he regarded as private was unsettling.

And yet Shinji remained standing. Not because he could not sit, or that he was too scared to sit, but because he refused to sit. He felt that to stay standing was to do something, and something was better than nothing.

Fuyutsuki seemed to notice. His chair squeaked as he eased it back. Then he stood, his tall frame blocking what little of the last light of evening streamed in through the living room, casting Shinji in shadow.

"We haven't ever spoken, you and I," he said, moving around the table. He ran a finger along the countertop, past the sink. "You have done a great deal since you arrived here, and for the most part, you have done all that has been asked of you. For what it's worth, I appreciate you being here."

Shinji watched as the finger ran across his utensils, his cookware and his apron. He flinched to see it, feeling as though his privacy—his very life—were being invaded. Then the finger dropped to Fuyutsuki's side.

"Still," the old man said, "you make mistakes. You have defied orders in the past. In combat situations, no less. Were it not for Major Katsuragi's council, I believe Commander Ikari would have sent you away a long time ago."

"What does my father have to do with this?" Shinji said, looking the man in the eye.

Fuyutsuki smiled. It was unexpected, and quite disarming. "Do you really think I would be standing here if it weren't for your father?"

"I don't know what to think," Shinji said.

"That's fair." Fuyutsuki looked around the kitchen again. "Do you like living here?"

"Yes."

"I thought so." Fuyutsuki took a breath. "Please, sit. Do an old man a favor?"

Shinji sat down. Fuyutsuki lingered behind him for a moment before walking away, back to his original side of the table. He sat back down and straightened his uniform jacket. It was that little motion that gave Shinji a fleeting understanding, of trust. A man who was not his father—not an icy monolith, but a person. Perhaps a friend.

"What do you remember of your mother?"

Shinji blinked. "What?"

"Your mother," Fuyutsuki repeated. "What do you remember of her?"

Shinji didn't speak immediately. When he did, it was with reticence and care. "I remember her smiling at me. I can't think of her face beyond that. I've tried, but I can't picture it. But I remember her smile. And her voice, too."

"What did it sound like?"

"Light," he said. "And calm, too. She always sounded calm."

Shinji watched the old man, trying to gauge if that had been the right answer.

"When you first came here, you asked your father why he had sent for you. Why it had to be you inside of Unit 01. He never answered you then, but I will now." Fuyutsuki folded his hands in his lap. "Your mother was a student of mine. I knew her before she met your father, actually."

Shinji stared, and listened.

"Your mother was the strongest person I've ever known. I looked up to her immensely. I know she was my student, but we became friends in the later years. It was always your mother's will that you pilot the Evangelion. She helped design it. Really, she was the leading designer on the whole project. In asking you here, your father was attempting to honor her wishes. Beyond that, I suspect he wanted to see if you were a son worth having."

Shinji felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. His mother had worked on the Eva? She _designed_ Unit 01, and she had wanted him to pilot it?

"Your mother was a driven woman. She always did all that she could as often as she could. She was strong, perhaps the strongest person I've ever known. She would not have wanted a son who could not perform his duties to an acceptable level. She would not have wanted a son whose synchronization scores have been steadily declining for the past few weeks, as yours have, and she certainly would not want a son who has begun a relationship with a child so dangerous to his wellbeing."

Shinji felt the guilt being heaped on him, and despite the pain of this man's disappointment and the strain of his new knowledge, he held Fuyutsuki's gaze as best he could. "What does Asuka have to do with anything?" he said.

"The Second Child," Fuyutsuki said, not deigning to give her a name, "physically assaulted you. You let it happen. You did not fight back, and you did not handle the situation properly."

Shinji looked at the table, face reddening.

"I won't hide this from you any further, Shinji: I was sent here to remove you from Katsuragi's care. This is your father's idea, and something that I don't agree with."

"Then why are you doing it?" Shinji muttered.

"Good question. I learned long ago that what I do or don't agree with makes very little difference. The world spins in spite of my beliefs or wants. I think you know something of that."

"Do I?"

"Of course. You hate the Evangelion, and yet you pilot it. You hate fighting, and yet you stay here." Fuyutsuki shrugged. "It is your place, your duty, just as this is mine."

Shinji did not know what to say to that. Fuyutsuki let him think on it, and did not fill the kitchen with words for a long moment.

"I don't want to do things just because my father wants me to," Shinji said, finally. "I won't be like you."

"That's understandable. Would it surprise you to know that I don't do what your father wants because of him?" Fuyutsuki leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. He looked tired. "I never liked your father. Not really. I wasn't going to join Nerv because of him. You know who changed my mind?"

"Who?"

"Your mother. She asked me to do this job, and I went along with it because of her. It's been eleven years since her death, and I'm still doing what Yui Ikari wanted of me." Fuyutsuki's smile changed, then, making his face older. Sadder. "You were there the day she asked me, actually. Much smaller than you are now. I can still remember it."

"That makes one of us," Shinji said.

"Indeed. It's not a memory you could have," Fuyutsuki said. "But you remember her smile, and her voice. So tell me: if she could see you now, see the life you've made for yourself, would she be smiling?"

Shinji thought of Unit 01, its impassive visage, its rage, and the blood-hot reality of fusing with it and standing eighty-meters tall before an onrushing god. He thought of the pain he experienced when piloting it, and he thought of Asuka, and he remembered his mother's smile, isolated in a fog of ill-memory—a pleasant glimpse of a woman now lost to him.

Shinji shook his head.

"As I thought," said the Sub-Commander. "You cannot have these connections anymore, Shinji. If you are to pilot the Evangelion, you must remove all these extraneous distractions. Become what your mother would want of you."

Shinji nodded. "I understand."

"Good." Fuyutsuki stood. "Come. A team of agents will help relocate you. This conversation is over."

((()))

Misato Katsuragi got to her apartment at 7:00 PM to find the parking lot filled with black sedans. She recognized the vehicles immediately. Section-2. She slammed her Alpine into park at the mouth of the drive and stepped out, running for the entrance. Something had gone wrong, and though she did not know what it could be, she knew one of her kids was in danger.

Car doors opened as she got closer, grim faces in black suits emerged from the vehicles. One of them moved toward her. "Major Katsuragi, we need you to—"

She shouldered him to the pavement and pushed on. She was inside the complex before anyone else could stop her.

She took the steps two and three at a time, bounding upwards, hands free of the railing. She counted the floors as she went, all the way to eleven, at which point she smashed her way out of the stairwell and hurled toward her apartment.

She stopped immediately.

Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki stood in front of her, flanked by a team of Section-2 agents. Shinji stood between two of them, his eyes downcast. The group was walking toward her, out of the apartment and toward the elevator.

Misato frowned. "What is this?"

Fuyutsuki regarded her with a sad expression. He did not speak and he did not stop. He wouldn't listen to her. Whatever decision he had made to lead to this was already made, effectively set in stone. No words would end this.

Still, his eyes held an apology, unspoken.

Misato thought about stopping him, about all the ways that could happen. She could shoot him. It was an insane thought, but it sprang into her head regardless, an instinct at seeing someone taking her kid.

She could kill him in cold blood and then shoot the agents, but then what? Get gunned down by the agents below? Leave Earth without a decent defender? Ruin Shinji's life? She was no murderer, anyway. It was then that she realized how powerless she was to stop him.

Still, she could not bring herself to move. She would stand her ground. If he wanted to get through, he would have to walk around her. He would have to alter his course in this if nothing else. Somehow that meant something to her. Perhaps it would be enough.

He went around her. A moment later, so did Shinji.

She turned. "Shinji—" she started, but he did not look up and she found she had no more words to say.

The Sub-Commander pressed the elevator's call button and waited, surrounded by his men. A moment later they climbed in and the door shut. The elevator rumbled down its track, and she was left with an empty corridor and tears in her eyes.

((()))

Asuka blew into the apartment like a hurricane, dumping her bag in the foyer and moving into the kitchen. "I need a shower," she said. "We had no hot water in the lockers, and I've got fluid in my hair. You'd think Nerv would have enough money to keep the water heated in its own locker rooms!"

She realized Misato was sitting at the table, head in her hands, a beer can untouched in front of her.

"Misato?" she said, not daring to get closer. The sight unnerved her into stillness. "Misato!" she said again, louder, hoping to shock her guardian out of her malaise. When that didn't work she walked past her, toward the bedrooms. "Shinji, what is going on?" she called.

Misato moved, looking up suddenly. "Asuka wait—"

Too late. The Second Child came back. "Where is he?" she said. "His bag isn't here."

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki came and took him." Misato had tears in her eyes. She stood up and moved to hug her.

For a moment, Misato saw the Second Child break. The anger went away from her eyes, and she became a hopeless child for the first time in a long time. "No," she said, allowing the arms around her.

"It'll be alright," Misato said.

"No!" Asuka shoved her away, the fire returning. "I don't want a verdammt hug! Why did this happen? Why did you let this happen?"

"I didn't know."

"What the hell is happening?" Asuka slammed her foot into the wall. "Why? Why did he take him?"

"I don't know."

"Where did he take him?"

"I don't know that, either."

"Well then what good are you?!" Asuka shoved her one last time, then ran away into Shinji's room, slamming the door shut behind her. It rebounded off the frame. Asuka slammed it shut again, this time holding it in place. "I hate not having locks!" she screamed, muffled.

Misato stood in the hallway for a moment, unsure what to do but certain that she couldn't go to comfort a person for whom she had no answers. After a moment she felt something tug at her leg. She looked down to see Pen-Pen.

"Hey, buddy," she said, kneeling. The penguin ran his beak across her palm. "I know, I know. Looks like we're down to two now, little guy. I'm so sorry."

She looked again at the closed door. "I'm so, so sorry," she said.

((()))

The apartment was small. It had a small kitchen, a small bedroom, and a small bathroom. There was no living room. Judging by the sterile, concrete walls, it was not a place designed to accommodate guests or recreation. It was a place to sleep and to be miserable. In many ways, it reminded Shinji of the apartment Ayanami lived in, though he doubted it was the same building.

Come to think of it, he wasn't even sure what part of the city he was in.

He stood in the bedroom, identified by its lone cot and set of drawers. A bare bulb gave stark illumination to the dead walls and discount carpet. A Section-2 agent stood behind him. His father was absent.

"Clothing has been provided for you. Food will be stocked periodically, and there are plenty of utensils and cooking supplies in the cupboards," said the agent. "You will be monitored constantly. If you need to reach Nerv personnel, a new cellular phone has been loaded with appropriate numbers. It's on the counter."

"Can I call Misato?" he said.

"Negative. All communications are restricted to the numbers pre-loaded into the phone."

"But isn't she my superior?"

The agent looked down at him. "You are permitted to communicate with Major Katsuragi and the other pilots during combat situations only. Any other contact will be supervised by Section-2 personnel under the direct instruction of Commander Ikari."

Shinji nodded. He walked to the bed and tested it with his toe. There was very little give to the mattress.

The agent continued. "The rest of your belongings will be delivered within the week. You're to report to school as normal, but you will be attending a new class. A car will pick you up in the morning."

And with that, the agent walked out of the apartment, the door swishing shut behind him. Alone, Shinji fell back on the bed. He thought about checking the phone or the status of his kitchen, but he couldn't bring himself to move. He had cried on the drive over, and he was certain he would cry again, but for now he could not muster the will.

He laid still, staring at another unfamiliar ceiling.

((()))

Shinji was not in the classroom. Asuka noticed that before anything else. She tossed her bag into her seat and marched to the front of the class. The teacher wasn't in yet, but she knew who would have answers.

"Hikari!" she demanded. "Where's the roster?"

The class rep spun around, a clipboard in her hand. "Asuka, I—"

"Give me that." Asuka ripped the clipboard from her hands. It was the roster, dated for the present class day. She scanned it quickly, checking the kanji for a familiar name. When she didn't see it, she scanned again. Nothing. "Where is Shinji?" she said, shoving it into her friend's chest.

"He got transferred! Class 2-B, across campus." Hikari held the clipboard in a defensive stance. "Please don't be angry!"

Asuka snarled and marched to the back of the room. Toji saw her coming and shoved his chair back from his desk in a move to stand up. Asuka shoved him back down with a palm on his shoulder. "Have you talked to him?" she said.

"Hey, I don't even know what's going on!" Toji held his hands up. "I haven't seen him since yesterday."

Asuka frowned and left him. As she was walking away, he gathered the courage to say more.

"Maybe he got tired of eating with the devil, huh?"

She spun, intending to pound him into the floor.

No. She breathed, in and out. That would get her nowhere. She needed to be like Shinji, here. Be calm. Figure this out.

She turned away from him.

Her hands had become fists the moment she walked into the room, and those fists were now shaking. She wanted answers, and she wanted to break free of this crap. Last night had been for crying, for the grief and the sudden sense of loss. Today was the fire. Today was the day she got him back. If they were going to scrub her life clean of Shinji Ikari, they were going to have to work for it.

"Hikari!" she shouted again. "Where is 2-B?"

"Asuka, you're not allowed to walk between buildings on campus. It's against—" Asuka glanced at her, and Hikari suddenly understood what it felt like to be targeted. She changed her tone. "It's in the east building, just across the concourse."

Asuka threw the classroom door open and marched into the hallway, shoving her way past students who milled in the space between the rooms and windows. East building. She had to get to the ground first.

She had just reached the top of the stairwell when the men caught her.

Two of them came out of nowhere, grabbing her by the shoulders and forcing her back. Asuka recognized their uniforms immediately: black suits, black sunglasses, black shoes. Section-2 agents. Pilot security.

"We need you to return to your classroom, please," one of them said, his fingers clenched around her bicep.

"Why?" she demanded, shaking them free. She turned to face them, intent on going through them if necessary. "Give me a reason!"

They looked down at her. "Pilot security has been elevated," one of them said, his voice as deep as his neck was thick. "We apologize for the inconvenience, but it is not safe to have all pilots in the same areas at the same times. You must maintain your standard school schedule in order for us to keep you safe."

As he spoke, three more agents appeared from the halls. They formed a semicircle around her.

"Please, Miss, make this easy on yourself," said the talker. "We're only trying to help."

They let her walk back to class on her own. Somehow that was more humiliating. If they had dragged her back, chained her to the desk and stood guard, she would at least know that she had done all she could. She walked back wishing she had done more, fantasizing what-ifs of nailing one guy with her knee, breaking his nose, and shooting her way out like an action hero. She didn't believe she could get to Shinji, but she believed that if she had only done more, she would have been content.

She entered the room angrier than she had left it. Her fists would not stop shaking. Even Toji knew to keep his mouth shut. She was about to sit down when she heard Hikari from the door, bidding someone good morning. Asuka looked.

Rei Ayanami walked into the room with Kensuke Aida in tow. The two had arrived together. They had not walked together from the same home, or slept in the same bed, or even held hands yet, but Asuka knew none of those things. She saw her fellow pilot—Wondergirl, no less—standing with a boy. She saw someone who was less than her in possession of something greater. It was in that moment that she imagined the last conversation she had shared with Ayanami.

" _Commander Ikari doesn't like pilots being romantic."_ Rei's expression had been level but not neutral. _"He does not approve."_

" _What the hell does that mean, Wondergirl?"_ she had asked then, and not gotten an answer. But as she stood with her fists shaking, the one bright spot in her life taken from her, she understood the words, rightly or wrongly, to have been a threat.

The Second Child ran at the First. A moment before contact, Rei turned, regarding her fellow pilot with a calm stare. Then Asuka's fist slammed into her nose and sent her tumbling to the ground.

Students screamed. Chairs fell to the ground. Hikari screamed for her to stop. Asuka ignored her. Kensuke moved to grab her shoulder and Asuka spun with it, grabbing his wrist and throwing him to the ground. Another student tried to help. Asuka didn't recognize the kid. She caved in his nose anyway. A moment more and four Section-2 agents were in the classroom, pulling her out of the door.

She was suspended an hour later.

((()))

Misato waited for the elevator to arrive, her arms filled with a laptop, thermos, twenty manila folders, and a sheaf of datadisks. All in all, it was almost more than she could carry, but she hadn't had time to pack properly after the news broke. She was needed home now.

Still, when the doors opened, she almost didn't get in.

Ritsuko saw the look on her face. "Misato, get in," she said. "We can be adults for a minute."

Misato didn't say anything. She climbed in and thumbed the button for the garage. The doors closed.

The floor counter ticked away, the only sound for a moment.

"Heading home early, I see," Ritsuko said. "Any particular reason?"

"You know damn well why," Misato said.

"Because of the Second Child's suspension?" Ritsuko kept her eyes on the ticking floor counter. "I don't see how that's any reason for you to alter your day."

"You don't see." Misato scoffed. "You're an absolute horror, you know that?"

"Really?"

"Yes really, you heartless bitch," Misato said, turning to face her. "Can you not for one second think of these kids as human beings?"

"Misato, you're being unreasonable."

"Please, tell me how."

"I understand perfectly the needs of the Children. They need stability as much as possible. We try to make their lives as normal as possible. Think about it: we don't need to let them attend school. We're already forcing them to fight for mankind's survival. We could just as easily pen them up in the headquarters and never let them leave. The point of the school is to let them socialize, to grow. Otherwise they wouldn't be as effective."

"Oh, for the love of God."

Ritsuko shrugged. "Part of that growth means letting them fail on their own so that they can learn to deal with their failures. If you were their age and got suspended from school, do you think your parent would take time off work to come home and comfort you? Would that help you grow? Would you learn self-reliance?"

"Depends. Did my boyfriend's estranged father force me to part ways with him and then fill the corridors of my school with armed goons?"

"The agents are there for pilot security," Ritsuko said.

Misato's eyes narrowed. "That's bull and you know it," she said.

"What would you have us do?" Ritsuko asked. "Not break them up?"

"You were with me on the decision to steer them together!" Misato said.

"I certainly was not. And even if I had been, I would have aborted the operation after she strangled him. You might be able to overlook that, but the rest of us see it as a significant indicator of how they each affect one another."

"You should have stayed the course. We have to maintain consistency with these kids," Misato said. "Good, bad, whatever. Rapid course changes don't help us. Getting hesitant doesn't help us. If we're not consistent they will get confused, and then they'll feel completely alienated."

"Consistency? Like in parenthood?" Ritsuko shook her head. "You're too close to this, Misato. You've lost your perspective. They aren't your children."

The door opened and Misato got out. "I suppose you'd think differently if they shit in boxes, right?" she said, walking away.

Ritsuko leaned forward and shouted after her. "The cat thing again? Seriously?"

"Damn straight!" Misato shouted back.

The doors closed before either woman could continue the fight.

((()))

Asuka sat on his bed, watching the men pack Shinji's belongings around her. They weren't Section-2 agents, but rather a moving company hired out by Nerv. There were three of them, one packing boxes while the other two moved items out.

It was not an intensive process. After all, Shinji had managed to fit everything he owned into a bedroom originally used as a storage closet.

She watched the man pack Shinji's cello into its case. He struggled to snap the bow into its clamp, grunting and heaving as the pressure made his thumb go white. It made her want to hit him.

"Be careful with that," she snapped.

The man nodded. He seemed unnerved by her presence, as if he wasn't used to a teenaged girl eyeing him while he did his job. Asuka figured that was a normal response.

"Asuka," Misato said, standing at the doorway. "What are you doing?"

"Just making sure these idiots don't break anything." Asuka didn't look away from the cello. "When did you get here?"

"Now," Misato said. "Can you step out here for a minute? I need to talk with you."

"About the suspension," Asuka said. "No thanks. I'm okay."

"I'd like to hear what happened."

"I'm sure there's a report you can read." Asuka shrugged. "There's always a report on everything."

Misato sighed, looking at the moving man. "Can you give us a second?" she said. The man looked like he wanted to protest, but stopped when he saw the look on her face. He left.

Misato closed the door and sat down on the bed next to her charge. "You're right," she began. "There is a report, and I've read it. I know what happened."

Asuka didn't speak. They sat for a moment, looking at the open cello case.

Misato spoke. "I understand what you're going through."

"No you don't." Asuka looked at her. "This is all your fault. You wanted me to get close to him, to care about him."

"Asuka, I just wanted to help you."

"Shut up! Shut your mouth!" She stood up and shoved Misato, pushing her to the end of the bed. "I don't need help! I've never needed help! I never should have listened to you! Get out!"

Misato let herself be pushed into the hallway. She let Asuka slam the door in her face, and let her scream from the other side. She listened to all of it, even as the screaming went from Japanese to German, and even when she couldn't understand the words through the tears in her soldier's voice. She listened as Asuka called her a horrible person, a meddler and a cheat, and she didn't resist because it wasn't her place and because it was partly true.

She listened as the screaming became sobbing and the sobbing became a whimper. She wondered what she was supposed to do, how she could help without making it worse.

She realized she had no good answer, no good ideas. Maybe it was just better to do nothing at all.

It was then that she walked away and found the movers clustered around her kitchen table.

"Can you come back tomorrow?" she asked them.

They did not say no.

((()))

"That's all, Shinji. Thank you for your time. We'll cycle out the LCL and pop the seal in just a moment."

"Understood," he said, leaning back in the seat. Lieutenant Ibuki's face was on his communications window. There was no one behind her that he recognized, just a lot of technicians. He assumed Dr. Akagi had gone home for the day, not wanting to run a synch test scheduled this late.

"Hey," said Ibuki. "How are you doing?"

Shinji forced a smile. "I'm okay," he lied.

Ibuki gave him a look that said she didn't believe him. "Just hang in there," she said. "If you need anything, let one of us know."

"Thanks," Shinji said. Ibuki nodded and disappeared. He understood that she wanted to help, but he couldn't think of one way that she could.

The LCL cycled, the seal popped, and he went to the locker room to change. Two agents were waiting for him at the entrance. Neither spoke nor looked at him as he entered. When he exited, backpack in hand, the agents were gone. A familiar face stood in their place.

"Hey, kid," said Ryoji Kaji. "How about a ride home?"

((()))

"Did Misato ask you to do this?"

Kaji's car was a basic sedan, and judging by the crisp smell of the seats and the identification tag stuck to the windshield, it was a Nerv-supplied vehicle. He drove it with ease, one hand on the wheel, another on his cup of coffee. Shinji always had the impression that Kaji rarely slept. He also got the impression that Kaji was the coolest person he knew.

"No," Kaji said. "I haven't spoken with her since your father made his decision."

Shinji looked out the window as they passed out of the GeoFront access tunnel and into the city proper. Streetlights zipped overhead, illuminating the car in regular spurts. He had grown to know the streets that they passed, enough to feel an unsettled pull in his stomach as they passed routes that, a short time ago, would have led to home.

"You miss them already," Kaji said. Shinji didn't respond, so he went on. "I had hoped your father wouldn't do this. I really did."

"You knew?" Shinji said.

"I had been told something might happen. By Sub-Commander Fuyutski, not by the Commander. You would be surprised how often adults talk about you, Shinji." Kaji looked at him. "You've never thought about that, have you?"

Shinji shook his head. He had not.

"Well, they do. Dr. Akagi and myself, the Commander and Fuyutski, all of us. We discuss you kids at length. You know why?"

"Not really."

"Because as in-charge as we think we are, as smart as we are, and as careful as we are, the fate of the world is still up to three children. Three children that we desperately need. And that fact terrifies us." Kaji sipped his coffee. When he realized it was empty, he cracked his window and tossed it out into the dark. "What did the Sub-Commander say his reason was for sending you away? Did he even give one?"

Shinji nodded. He felt a lump building in his throat at the memory alone, but he forced himself to speak in spite of it, deciding to leave out the parts that were still hard to focus on. "He told me that my synch scores were falling. If I was going to be useful, I needed less distractions. He also said Asuka was a danger to me."

Kaji shook his head. "That's completely false."

Shinji looked up sharply. "What?"

"That's false," Kaji repeated. "Your synch scores aren't made available to you, but you're doing very well. You've been increasing steadily since you were brought on-board, and at no point have you fallen from test to test. Broken even? Sure, but never fallen."

"But Asuka is—"

"A danger to you? Maybe once. She did attack you, but that's been a month or more."

"You know about that!?"

"Shinji, everyone knows about that." Kaji waved around the car, as if indicating people that weren't there. "Pilot security didn't just materialize out of thin air. In any case, if Asuka was truly a danger to you, why wouldn't your father have pulled you out of the apartment immediately after that? Why wait a month?"

Shinji looked at his feet, thoroughly confused. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"I don' know. Maybe I'm just tired of seeing them lie to you. You weren't sent away because of synch rates and it surely wasn't because Asuka is somehow a threat to your safety. It's because the Commander understands that you and Asuka together are a force to be reckoned with."

"How?"

"You both have weaknesses, but you help each other with them. You make each other stronger." Kaji turned the wheel, drawing them nearer. "Love is about strengthening another person and them strengthening you. That's what love is, Shinji, and that's why it's worth you fighting to preserve it."

Shinji thought about all the ways Asuka made him better, how she gave him something to care about and something to aim for, how together with her he fought harder and lived better. When he tried to think of ways he had helped her, he drew a blank.

"I'm not sure I've ever helped Asuka," he said.

Kaji sighed. "I think you're wrong. She was suspended from school two days ago. Fighting. It's her first offense ever. Your presence certainly made an impact on her."

"What happened? Who did she fight?"

"I don't know any more than that," Kaji lied. "But you see what I'm saying? She needs you, Shinji. You've got to get in contact with her."

"How?" Shinji turned to him. "I take my synch tests in the middle of the night. I go to a different class at school. Everywhere I turn there are guys in black suits keeping me from doing anything at all! Even if I tried to find her, how could I? It's impossible."

They pulled into the parking lot outside Shinji's new apartment complex. The building was a grey monolith, impenetrable in the moonlight. They were alone in the lot. Kaji put the sedan in park.

"That's a good point," Kaji said. "A lot of things are impossible until someone comes along and does them. Beating an Angel in your first sortie, after just learning that Angels even exist? That's impossible. Machines that are eighty-meters tall? That's really impossible. Getting an Eva pilot alone for a ride home while he's under top-level surveillance? Well, that might as well be an act of God."

Shinji didn't respond immediately. But after a moment, a smile of awareness spread across his face. Kaji winked at him and unlocked the door.

Shinji hopped out. Before he left, he knelt back down into the car. "Thanks for the ride Mr. Kaji," he said.

"No problem, kid."

Shinji shut the door and walked inside. Kaji watched him go, making sure nothing happened. When he was finally gone, the spy took a deep breath and slipped his car back into drive.

"I am extremely fired," he muttered, to no one in particular.


	14. Chapter 14

Shinji Ikari opened his eyes to the sounds of heavy construction. It was a noise that had awakened him every morning, without fail, since he moved into this new apartment, but he had been unable to identify the source of the construction. Two nights previous, he had tried to take a walk to find it, but his security team had stopped him. "Pilot safety," they had said.

He threw back the sheets and made his way to the shower, stepping over and between the moving boxes that now filled his small room. None had been opened.

The shower was weak and cold and he took it quickly. He dried himself as he cooked breakfast—an egg sandwich. His lunch was already packed and in the refrigerator, a symptom of having nothing to do with his evenings.

He ate as he dressed. He could see the morning traffic through his window, a hustle of men and women in the middle of a morning commute. He never saw families from his window, never a mother and her kids, never students walking to school.

Shinji sat down on his bed and put his shoes on. He looked at the clock. 6:56. Plenty of time. He sat and finished his egg sandwich.

When it was gone, he looked around at the boxes. None of them were labeled, so that even if he wanted to open them, he would have no idea where to begin. He supposed there was no point to any of it. It wasn't as if he had belongings that he cared about, anyway—just a lot of stuff Misato had bought him. A desk lamp. Bedsheets. SDAT tapes, never unwrapped. Clutter, all of it.

He looked at this cello case, balanced atop one of the boxes, moving tape still binding its lid shut. He looked at it for a long time.

7:00. A rapid thud knocked at his front door—one of the agents signaling it was time to go.

Shinji got up, grabbed his backpack, and left, leaving the cello behind.

((()))

Four days ago, Rei Ayanami had been punched in the face, and though the swelling had subsided quite a bit, the mark still showed—two bruised knuckle-marks on her right cheek and temple. Both were partially covered by her hair, and though she did not care about the marks or the throbbing pain she sometimes felt from them, Rei did wonder at the way others looked at them. She did not understand their interest. She was still the same person, marks or not. She guessed that others saw the marks as symbolic, a thing the Second Child had created on her face. They were artifacts in that way, proof of a confrontation and premonitions of another to come.

Or maybe she was wrong. Rei was prepared to accept that. She had been wrong before. She also realized that she needed to pay attention to her surroundings as she walked to school, especially considering the person she was about to encounter.

"Hey, Rei!" Kensuke Aida leaned against the same guardrail that he had leaned against every morning for the past two weeks, at the intersection of Inoki and Watanabe. He had his backpack, he had a smile, and Rei still wasn't sure what to think of him.

"Kensuke," she said, stopping in front of him. "Do you want to walk with me again?"

"Definitely," he said. "I mean, that's still okay, right?"

Rei nodded. "That's fine."

"Well, alright!" Kensuke hopped down from the rail. "After you!"

Not that he actually followed her. To date he had always walked alongside her. Rei was never sure what to say to him. She was not sure what to say to a lot of people, which was usually a problem. In her experience, people were not content to sit in silence with another person. She imagined Kensuke was not, either.

The difference was that Kensuke never seemed uncomfortable around her. It was as if he never noticed the silence, partially because he never ran out of things to say. It was his comfortable demeanor that let her feel at ease around him, and why she did not care if he walked with her or not.

"How tall are the Evas, anyway?" he said, in the now.

"It varies depending on the Unit," Rei said.

"Oh, I get it." Kensuke looked at her. "It's alright that I ask about the project, right? That doesn't bother you?"

Rei shook her head.

"Oh, alright. Cool." He smiled, though Rei wasn't sure why and decided not to smile back. "How tall is yours?"

"Unit 00 is 80.5 meters in height," she said.

Kensuke's eyebrows shot up. "That's awesome!" he said. "I can't imagine what that's like. I mean, I was inside Shinji's cockpit once, but man, eighty meters? And you're in control of that? That's got to be nuts!"

They stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for the traffic flow to cease. Rei looked at him. She felt compelled to say something, to understand him better. "You ask a lot about Eva," she said. "Why?"

That wrong-footed him. "They're cool," he said.

Rei stared at him, waiting for something more. She got it.

"I just don't know what else to talk to you about," he said. "Ever since we had lunch, I've just wanted to hang out and talk with you, but I don't know anything about you, really. I know you pilot the Evangelion, so I figured if I asked you about that, we could have some common ground."

"Commonality," Rei said.

"Exactly!" Kensuke adjusted his glasses. "But, I mean, if you'd rather not talk about it, then I'll shut up."

"I'm fine with talking about it," Rei said.

The traffic stopped, providing an opening. Rei walked across the street, and Kensuke jogged to catch up. "Just one more thing about it, then I'll talk about something else," he said. "When we were sitting on the roof and watched you and Shinji go out to fight that Angel, your Evangelion was orange. Now I see it on the news and it's completely blue."

"Yes," Rei said.

"Which did you like more?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean which one is your favorite?" he said. "The blue or the orange?"

"I am unsure."

"Huh," Kensuke said. "Well, I like the blue more."

"Why?" she asked.

"It just fits you. The news almost never shows Shinji or Asuka's machines. They're both freaky. But yours seems, I don't know, natural? Like it's meant to be there." Kensuke shrugged. "I probably sound like I'm not making any sense."

Rei looked at him. "You make sense," she said.

"Oh, good!" Kensuke smiled. "Plus, it matches your hair."

Rei smiled back at him.

They walked the rest of the way to school, Kensuke maintaining a running commentary about his father's computer, and how easy it was to access classified Nerv files. He seemed very proud of himself, so Rei decided not to explain how relatively unimportant those files actually were. They reached the classroom just after the first bell, and entered to a confused class.

The class representative met them at the door. "Mr. Aida, I need to speak with Ms. Ayanami," she said.

"About what?" Kensuke said, puffing up his chest.

Hikari rolled her eyes and looked directly at Rei. "Asuka's suspension is up today, but we haven't seen her. Do you know anything?"

"I do not," Rei said.

((()))

Misato knocked on Asuka's bedroom door. "Asuka, it's nearly eight. What are you doing?"

She waited, hands in the pockets of her uniform jacket. She tried to ignore the gnawing hunger in her gut. Without Shinji, breakfast in the Katsuragi home had become a thing of the past. She listened, but heard no answer. She sighed.

"Okay, I'm coming in," she said, and opened the door.

The Second Child was still a lump in her bed. She rolled away as the door opened, taking most of the covers with her. Misato wasn't sure what to say to her. They hadn't communicated much in the past week, except in passing. Asuka seemed to blame her for Shinji's absence, and Misato wasn't sure the kid was wrong.

"What's up, kiddo?" Misato said, trying her best.

Asuka didn't move, didn't speak. Misato nodded to herself. "I, uh," she started, not sure where she was going or how to get there, "I want you to know that I'm sorry Shinji is gone, but I'm not sorry for anything else. I know you, Asuka. I know how hard it is for you to let someone in. And I know that right now this thing hurts more than anything you can imagine. But I also know how tough you are, how hard you work and how strong you can be, and I know that despite how much this hurts right now, the time you had with Shinji was worth it. So I'm not sorry for pushing you two together, and I never will be."

Asuka still didn't move. Misato sighed. "Look, whatever you want to do from now on is up to you," she said. "If you don't want to go to school today, that's fine. I'll call you in sick."

"I don't want to go to school at all," Asuka said, her voice muffled.

"At all," Misato repeated. "As in ever again?"

She could see the back of Asuka's head as she nodded. "I've already been to college. I don't need to go," she said. "I only went in the first place to make friends, and now I don't care about that, either. It's just pointless."

"You don't have any friends there?" Misato said. "What about the Horaki girl?"

"She doesn't count," Asuka said. "Sometimes we're friends, but I can't talk about everything with her. It's the same with all of those kids. They whine about homework and talk about their stupid little crushes. What am I supposed to say? 'Hi, I know you're sad about that boy not noticing you. Want to hear about the time I helped shove two battleships into the mouth of an alien whale?'"

Misato laughed. She knew it was inappropriate considering the circumstances, but she could not help it. She had begun to stop herself when she saw Asuka's shoulders begin to shudder, and she realized that she wasn't the only person in the room who found it funny. Then she laughed openly, and Asuka joined her.

Asuka rolled over to face her. "You know what I mean though, right?"

"More than you know," Misato said, smiling. "Kids suck. I don't know if I ever was one, anyway."

"Same," Asuka said.

Misato frowned, thinking. She tapped her fingers on the doorframe, and then suddenly looked up, frown gone, as if she had solved every problem in the world. "I'm going to call the school and inform them that you won't be requiring their educational services anymore. That sounds professional, right?"

Asuka grinned. "Definitely."

"Good. Now this is conditional on you actually doing something with your days." Misato pointed at her. "Lounging around in bed from dawn till dusk is just as much a waste of your time. You have to get out and accomplish things."

"Can't I just go to work with you?" Asuka said.

"Why would you want to?"

The Second Child threw back the covers and pulled herself upright. Misato got the impression that she hadn't changed clothes in at least two days, and that she hadn't bathed for just as long. Asuka looked like a mess, and it took all that Misato had not to hug her right then. She didn't need an answer, now. If it would prevent this train wreck, then Asuka could come with her anywhere, anytime.

"I don't work well at the school, and I don't do well sitting around here," Asuka said. "I'm at my best when I'm there, in the plug. Or near it. Is that alright?"

Misato smiled, though the smile could not reach her eyes. "It's totally alright, Asuka," she said.

((()))

The teacher was gone for a few minutes, but the class stayed put, afraid of the wrath of Hikari Horaki. They sat patiently, quietly, their hands in their laps. Toji Suzuhara had his feet up on his desk when he heard the clamor in the hallway—shoes on tile and hushed, hurried male voices. He leaned toward Kensuke. "What's all that about?" he said.

"Must be the suited guys who protect the pilots," he said. "Maybe something's going down?"

Toji moved to say something, but the teacher returned before he could speak. The class stood, bowed, and sat down. The old man got behind his desk and cleared his throat.

"Asuka Langley Soryu has decided to no longer attend school," he said, pulling a note from his pocket to read from. "Her guardian has cited Ms. Soryu's 'over-qualification for public education' and said she 'no longer requires our educational services.'"

The class was silent for a moment. Toji made sure it was a brief silence.

"Hell yeah!" he said.

Hikari spun in her seat. "Keep quiet, Suzuhara!"

Wild debate and shouting broke out across the classroom. It didn't recover its decorum for another thirty minutes.

((()))

It had only been an hour since they pulled into the command center's parking garage and Asuka was already bored. She leaned back, feet on the edge of the desk in front of her to tilt her chair back on two legs. She balanced back and forth, staring at the ceiling of Misato's office. "Is this what you do all day?" she said.

Misato didn't look up from her computer. "More or less."

Asuka looked around the office. There wasn't much too it. Dark walls, utilitarian cabinets, and a small refrigerator. Aside from Misato's jacket, hanging on its hook near the door, there were no personal artifacts in sight. Papers filled every open surface, the haphazard filing attempts of a person very overwhelmed.

"This sucks," she said.

"Yep," Misato said. "It takes a lot of work to keep this place operating."

"I guess." Asuka took her feet off the desk and thudded forward. She put her chin on the desk and looked at Misato's computer. "What are you working on?"

"Ordnance requisitions. Every shot that goes through your pallet rifles has to be manufactured in the United States, carbon-stamped, and approved by Japanese customs." Misato looked at her pilot and could tell by the way Asuka was staring at the desk that none of her words were registering. "You don't have to sit here if you don't want to," she said.

Asuka shrugged. "What else can I do?"

"You can go for a walk," Misato said. She reached into her purse and pulled out her employee charge card. "Here, take this. Go down to the vending machines and get a bite to eat. Get me something, too."

Asuka shrugged and stood up. She grabbed the card and walked to the door without a word. Her fingers were on the 'open' button when she stopped. "Can I wear this?" she said, pointing at the jacket.

Misato looked baffled. "What for?"

"I don't know," Asuka said, touching the hem. "Why not? It's not like it has your gun in it."

"Sure, Asuka. Go ahead."

The Second Child snapped it off the hook and left the room.

"Don't get lost!" Misato shouted after her, as the door closed.

((()))

Shinji opened his desk's laptop and tapped in his school login ID. The rest of 2-B's students had formed into groups, working in small teams to finish their physics assignment. Shinji was alone amongst them, his desk isolated in the middle of the room. The teacher had looked at him a few times, but had not approached or tried to enmesh him in any of the pre-existing groups.

Shinji understood the situation. None of the students really knew him, except by reputation. He imagined that reputation—alongside the fact that he had been transferred into their class halfway through the year—made him pretty unapproachable. Rumors of his job and his constant contact with the black-suited bodyguards in the hallway made him equally immune to being bullied or befriended.

It hurt. Not because he was not friends with any of them, but because of the friends he already had that were no longer around him. He went whole days without really speaking to anyone, existing in his homework and the small walls of his apartment.

Well, that was about to change.

He tapped through the laptop's settings, accessing the inter-computer network chat. By default, it was connected to the laptops in his classroom, on 2-B's local network. The students around him appeared by numerical student ID and laptop number. The lack of an easy way to find someone to message was the biggest obstacle to the students using the function when they weren't supposed to, though of course they had found ways around it. Shinji learned on his first day that half the fun of having a laptop at your desk was the ability to talk with friends without the teacher noticing.

He exited the 2-B network and found 2-A's network. The password hadn't changed since he had been transferred, and in just a few clicks, he was looking at a familiar bank of numbers. He recognized most of them. Toji was 230007, Kensuke was 230013. The class rep was 230001, known by every other student so that they could avoid ever messaging it, lest they get caught.

Of course, just by logging into 2-A's network, Shinji understood that he was running the risk of Hikari catching him, but he doubted even she would rat on him given the circumstances. Besides, this was worth the risk.

He looked through the list of numbers, checking for 230016—Asuka's number. When he didn't see it, he looked again, this time checking every number individually. Nothing.

Maybe she didn't have her laptop on. That seemed strange, though, considering that every other student was logged on. He wondered how long he could risk loitering in the network before someone found him.

As if in answer to his question, a message popped up from 230013. [Shinji is that you?]

Shinji typed back. [Hey Kensuke.]

[What are you doing? Hikari is gonna be pissed!]

Of all the people in his former class, Shinji had always found it funny that Kensuke came across in writing exactly as he did in reality. He was about to respond when another message popped up, this one from 230007.

[shinji that u?]

Shinji grinned. [Hey, Toji.]

[sick]

Kensuke cut in, joining all the IDs into one chat. [How are things across the building? Everything okay?]

[I'm good.] Shinji looked around. No one was paying him any attention. [Things are quiet here.]

[gurls?] Toji said.

[Yes. There are girls over here.]

[nice]

Shinji shook his head. [Hey, Asuka isn't online. Can one of you get her to open her laptop?]

There was a pause. Shinji frowned, imagining his friends shooting each other looks and mouthing back and forth. His mind went into crisis mode, imagining what they weren't telling him. Had her suspension been extended? What was going on?

Eventually, Kensuke responded. [Asuka quit school.]

[yea] said Toji. [she gone]

[It happened this morning. The teacher made an announcement and everything. We were hoping you knew why. No one told you?]

Shinji closed his laptop and eased back in his chair. He clasped his hands in his lap and stared at the desktop, trying to think but finding it difficult. He looked across the room and out the window, at the tops of the other campus buildings and beyond to the hills and the sky above them, and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now.

((()))

The jacket fit loosely, heavy in the shoulders and long in the hem. The cuffs engulfed her wrists and brushed her palms. Pads sewn throughout the material gave it a heft so that it felt vaguely like a suit of armor. She imagined it made Misato feel confident, and that it would have given her the same confidence if it fit her better.

Asuka angled into the break room, hands in her new pockets, and examined the snack machine. A group of employees sat huddled at the opposite end of the room. Asuka watched them for a moment, saw them laughing and chatting, and tried to recognize their faces. They all wore the orange jumpsuits of cage technicians. They had likely worked on her Unit 02 before, but she did not know them, just as she had not known any of the employees at Nerv-03 in Germany.

Asuka slid her card into the vending machine, punched a random number, grabbed the bag of chips that dropped out, and sat down at a nearby table. She ate her chips. After some time, the technicians quieted. Asuka caught them glancing at her twice. They left not long after.

Asuka watched them go. She got up and threw away her empty bag, wondering what the hell the point of going to work was when she didn't even have a job, and if she had made the wrong decision by dropping out.

"So you're stealing jackets now, then," said a voice. "That's a pity. I had such hopes for you."

Asuka spun around, and for the first time in almost a week, she smiled. "Kaji!" she said.

"What, no flying tackle?" he said, standing in the doorway to the break room. "I'm hurt."

Part of her wanted to flying tackle him, but she stopped herself. She wouldn't be a little girl right now, and she was proud of herself for seeing it that way, but most of the stoppage came from the embarrassment she now felt when she looked back on her interactions with Kaji.

"Sorry, Kaji," she said. "I just can't do that anymore."

"That's understandable. And I'm glad to hear it, by the way." Kaji walked over to the soda machine and slid his card. "I was in the mood for an iced coffee, but they took that machine away. I guess someone broke the glass. Can't imagine who that would be, can you?"

Asuka remembered the machine, and remembered the way its glass shattered under her elbow. "You heard about that?" she said.

Kaji shook his head. "No, no, no. You cannot ever admit to something that way."

Asuka raised her eyebrows. "Huh?"

"You have to speak covertly." Kaji took his drink and leaned against one of the tables. "You have to talk _around_ the truth. And if you're going to be working around adults, that's a key skill to have."

"Did Misato tell you I quit school?"

"I'm not saying she didn't." Kaji took a sip and watched her. "See what I mean?"

"Yeah," Asuka said, grinning despite herself. "I mean, maybe."

"You're getting it," Kaji said. "So if I were to say 'I heard someone quit school recently,' what would you say?"

Asuka leaned against the wall across from him, trying to look nonchalant. She imagined the jacket helped the image. "I would say 'I believe that could be the case,'" she said.

"Very covert." Kaji pointed at her. "So if I said 'I bet someone who quits school like that is probably too smart for school anyway…'"

"I'd say you are definitely right because they're all idiots anyway."

Kaji shrugged. "It's not their fault you're a genius, kid."

"Who said we're talking about me?" Asuka said, crossing her arms.

"You catch on fast." Kaji dumped what was left of his drink in the trash. "Want to head back to Katsuragi's office? I'll walk you there."

Asuka nodded. "Sure."

((()))

The door swished open, drawing Misato's attention away from her computer. "Asuka—" she said, then stopped when she saw Kaji following her pilot.

"I can't believe you told him!" Asuka said, storming toward the desk.

"Told him what?" Misato said.

"About me quitting!" Asuka said.

"I didn't—" Misato looked up at Kaji.

 _Don't blow it,_ he mouthed. Misato frowned.

"Sorry, Asuka," she said. "I emailed him about it earlier."

The Second Child rolled her eyes and plopped down into her seat. "So much for roommate confidentiality."

"I know. That's on me." Misato stood up. "You good here for a minute? I need to talk to Kaji for a minute."

"Sure, whatever," Asuka said. "I'll see you later, Kaji!"

"Later, Asuka."

Misato shoved the Chief Inspector out of the office and shut the door behind her. "What is going on?" she said. "How did you know about that?"

"It's not a big secret, Major," he said, his permanent Kaji half-smirk firmly in place. "It was reported system-wide across the Section-2 server the minute you called her school."

"Oh, sure. Messages all across the server that you're not supposed to have access to."

"Technically," he said, "my old handler clearance still gives me access."

"And technically," Misato said, "there were messages on that same server just a few days ago that referenced Shinji Ikari falling off the security grid for half an hour."

"I must've missed those messages," Kaji said.

"I'll bet you did." Misato jammed a finger into his chest. "What are you trying to do?"

His smirk faded as his hand wrapped around her finger. "Just keeping your plan going," he said. "Just helping. Nothing bad."

Misato looked at his hand, thought it was sweet, and decided to let the rest of her fingers get in on holding it. "Let's say I believe you," she started.

"Okay," he said.

"Don't interrupt," she said. "Let's say I believe you, and you're trying to help me with whatever the hell I've been doing—because honestly I don't know sometimes—I thought you were on Ritsuko's side, anyway."

"When have I ever been on Ritsuko's side, ever?"

"Yeah, but you said Shinji was a cobra and he would eat Asuka."

"Well, not literally." Kaji sighed. "I thought there would be complications, but now I'm not sold on it. If there was any risk of Shinji changing in that way, I think the Commander's scare tactics have beaten that out of him."

Misato took a breath. "How was Shinji when you saw him?"

"Damn far from a cobra," Kaji said. "But he'll get through it. He's a survivor, maybe more than people give him credit for."

Misato started to speak, but had to bite down to squash the waver in her voice. "I'm glad you talked to him," she said. "I feel like I screwed that part up."

"Hey," Kaji said, and then the entire world was filled with red lights and blaring alarms.

Aoba's voice boomed through the corridor intercom. "First level alert! First level alert! All combat personnel to level one battle stations!"

Misato shoved Kaji's hand back and slammed her office door open. "Asuka, get out here!" she shouted. "And give me back my jacket!"

((()))

The sirens sounded, shaking the class from its studies. Shinji watched his teacher as she told the class to proceed to the emergency shelter. He could see her fear, the anxiety that filled her frame and warbled her voice. He watched the kids around him as they ran from the room, all sense of order lost in the scramble for the exit. He didn't move from his desk.

In a moment, Shinji was alone in the room, the sirens blaring from beyond the windows. He waited.

The classroom door opened and a pair of Section-2 agents entered. Shinji wondered if they were the same guys who drove him to school every day, but between the identical sunglasses and black suits, he had no way of knowing.

"Pilot Ikari, you're needed."

Shinji stood and let them lead him through the halls, past the empty doorways and opened lockers, and into the parking lot. They put him in a car and sped him towards the GeoFront, past still-running vehicles that lay abandoned across the streets, their doors open, and all the way he heard the sirens, their wails rising and falling, rising and falling, the reverberations filling his chest. He watched as the city changed around him, office buildings sinking and giving way to armament towers and missile batteries. He felt his blood rush at the nearness of the coming fight, and he realized that he had begun to breathe in time with the sirens. He breathed in time with the city. He breathed in time with his city.

He craned his neck to look around the men that sat on either side of him, his eyes searching for the Angel. He eventually caught a glimpse of it, between the strips of concrete and glass and steel that flashed by, and he could form an impression of it. Black and white bands, stripes and swirls—a cacophonous pattern of light and dark that sat in the sky. It was only when they cleared the tallest buildings and began to make their final stretch towards the GeoFront that he saw it fully: a zebra-print sphere that dominated the sky, hovering between the skyscrapers.

Shinji looked at it and felt fear, dread, and the oncoming anticipation of the pain of a fight. In his sudden beholding of it, he understood his own frailty, and so began to panic.

"Roger," said one of the Section-2 agents, into his wrist mic. "We are clear of the launch site."

"Launch site?" Shinji said.

And then she was there.

Gleaming red and impossibly vast, Unit-02 appeared from the streets, the rumble of its launch cradle shaking the roadway. An armament tower opened alongside it, deploying the haft of a smash hawk axe. Shinji saw the Evangelion advance, hand slipping around the axe's handle as one titanic footfall carried it towards the Angel, and then the sight was gone, vanished before him as the car dashed into a tunnel.

Shinji looked backwards, trying to spot her again, but the tunnel's blast door was already closing.

"How long?" he said.

The agent in the passenger seat glanced at him. "Only a few more minutes."

Shinji nodded. He looked at his hand and focused on flexing his fingers, making and unmaking a fist, until his nerves had subsided at the shaking in his wrist stopped.

((()))

The Second Child flexed her fingers, feeling the tight fit of the plugsuit. The plug thrummed around her, and when she rolled her shoulders, the motion was mimicked by muscles as thick as train tracks and as tightly wound as suspension cables. This was her jacket, her mantle, the place where she was at home. She felt two bodies at once, and much preferred the larger one, the one crouched behind an office building, axe in hand, ready to strike.

She leaned out, snaking two of her eyes beyond cover, spying the Angel as it hovered overhead. "I have a visual," she said. "Target is inert."

Misato's face appeared in her periphery. "Understood. Units 01 and 00 are being readied for sortie. Hold position and await backup."

"Copy," Asuka said. The news that Shinji was on his way was exciting, but only to a distant part of her—a new part that loved another person and wanted to see him. That part, however, had no business inside an Evangelion. This Asuka—the one that stood eighty meters tall and ran on electricity—was more interested in the fight.

She watched the Angel, which was still immobile. She flicked on her visual reconnaissance suite and scanned it. The readings came back garbled. One moment her on-board computer calculated the sphere's diameter as one hundred meters, and the next as twelve parsecs. It was as if her spectrometer was scanning through the object.

After a moment, the readings solidified enough to give her a surface density. The Angel was there, at least, and she knew she could hit it. More precisely, she knew she could cut into it, and probably rip it apart.

So Asuka waited, and the knowledge that she could slowly became a conviction that she should. "I can land a kill stroke," she said, after a moment.

"Negative," was Misato's immediate response. "The Magi don't even have a blood pattern confirmation on the target yet. Wait for backup."

Asuka liked Misato. She liked Shinji, too. But the implication that she needed backup in order to hack a giant zebra ball from the sky was infuriating.

"I can do it!" she said.

"Asuka, this is a combat situation. You will calm down and do as you are told. Unit 01 will be topside in sixty seconds. Just _wait_."

Asuka frowned, but she stayed put, content to watch her scans progress. She watched the Angel. It still had not moved.

Her scans pinged back. Blood pattern blue. It was fleeting, cycling away just as soon as it had appeared, but it was confirmation.

"I have a confirmed blood pattern," Asuka said. "Did you read that? I'm going in."

This time, it wasn't Misato who spoke up. Doctor Akagi appeared, right in Asuka's face. "Hold your position, pilot."

That did it.

"Oh yeah?" Asuka said, and disconnected the line. She flew through commands on her control yokes, locking out overall feed to her direct control circuits, cutting feed to headquarters, and isolating any communications not from another Evangelion.

Then she charged.

((()))

Shinji slammed into place at the top of the launch pad, his Eva's head swinging up as the g-forces dispersed. His HUD cycled, scanning the city, identifying Unit 00 a kilometer to his left, and Unit 02, half a kilometer in front of him as it leapt up a building. He watched her, his optics auto-focusing on her movements. He saw her hit the summit of her skyscraper, then hurl herself outward, axe coming down in an overhead stroke, right into the Angel.

The axe touched the sphere, and then the sphere was gone, taking the streets with it.

An inky darkness, pitch as the night sky, spread across the ground. Shinji felt it deploy, like an AT Field's song but played sour, off-note and corrupt. It acted as a quicksand, pulling cars, streetlamps, and buildings into itself. It dragged at his feet, too, sucking him down. He felt fear pulling at him.

And Asuka had landed in the middle of it.

Misato blinked on. "All units pull back! Get out of there!"

Unit 00 moved away, jumping out of the black. Shinji watched her go. The black was up to his ankles, but he could still move. He saw safe ground in the buildings around him, and just a few short jumps to his rear.

And he saw Asuka in front of him, clawing onto the side of a sinking building, her smash hawk dug into the side of it. She was up to her waist, unable to move.

He hesitated.

"Shinji!" Misato said. "Fall back!"

Shinji looked at Unit 02 and saw it in a volcano, in the middle of the ocean, and beside him as they kicked in a monster's core, held off a living bomb, and shot a city-sized spider into pieces. He thought of her beside him, and his fear was gone.

"Negative," he said, and shut off the feed.

((()))

Asuka breathed slowly and tried not to think about drowning. She lifted her arm—the only one not consumed by the black—trying to find purchase on the top of the building. She was fingertips away. Too short. She couldn't make it.

Then he was there. He landed atop the building, a crouching, violet shadow that blocked out the sun. He grabbed her hand, setting off a collision alarm.

"Hey," he said.

"I was fine," she said. "Now pull me up."

He tried. She felt the strain in her hand, but she didn't rise.

"No." She pulled on his hand. Nothing. No movement. "No, no, no, no, no, no—"

"Asuka!" he said.

She was going to drown. The thought flashed into her head before she could stop it. She was going to drown. She tried to pull her other hand free of the black, but it would not move. Her breath left her. The black was up to her temples, pressing in, suffocating.

"Help me!" she screamed, for the first time in ten years. "Help me! Shinji!"

Unit 01 grabbed her wrist with its free hand and pulled, its musculature straining beneath its plating. "Asuka! I'm trying!"

"Don't let go of me!"

She pulled, as hard as she could. Unit 01's joints locked, resisting the force. Asuka's descent halted. The black was at her eye-line—like being at sea-level in a black hole.

"I've got you," said Shinji.

And then the building he was standing atop snapped. The two Evangelions went down, slamming into the emptiness.

The blackness slipped over her eyes. She passed over the accretion disk and was met with the sight of dizzy, unimaginable midnights, a riot of colors surmounting a red core—the beating pulse of the thing that had trapped her.

And then it was gone, replaced by an infinite white.

Asuka screamed.


	15. Interlude II

You sleep while your body moves. You smolder in the nothing-dark, straining to see, straining to feel, haunted by the blurts of sensation that briefly caress what was your mind. Sights you hear, sounds you taste, the brief brush of unyielding steel around your bones and soul. Your name drifts, and you cling to it, to who you were or could have been or maybe still are.

It has been forever.

It has been never.

Drift, you. One in two.

((()))

It does not hunt you because you are a part of it. You are inextricable. Once subsumed, you have become it, one and the same. A unit.

Its hunger is dull. Its lobotomized soul needs and cares for nothing, and only remembers its birth—dead, cold flesh given necrotic life. It knows you were responsible. That's why it holds you so close, invades your thoughts—forces plurality into your thoughts, so there is no you or it. It wants you closer. It fights and kills but needs you to feel for it, to give it the life it can never have alone.

You have never given in. You resist because resistance maintains the distinction and keeps your me from becoming we.

Hate, you. One of two.

((()))

Sometimes you think you can smell her. Other times you think she's still within you, as she was when you were pregnant. Either way, you know she is close, just outside of your touch.

You only feel her when the power flows, when what passes for the monster's dead soul is lit—a guttering, weak candle. Still, it feels your love for her, and so it hides her from you.

Years must have passed. Her scent changes tune, growing bolder and stronger and louder. There is a sadness there, too, muffled by layers of icy rage. She is determined, fierce, independent. She is lost, anguished, alone.

How old is she now? How many years has she lived without you? Does she miss you? Does she remember you at all?

You want to praise her, comfort her. How many times have you thought to reach out? How many times have you held back, knowing that if you did, you would give the thing what it wants—more control, more participation.

How many times have you been ashamed of yourself, for putting your own pain above the comfort of your daughter?

Always. Never.

Cry, you. One in 02.

((()))

Suddenly and for once, you feel her entirely. She's no longer hidden. She's in plain sight, older and younger than you'd ever guess. And she's screaming.

You see through her eyes, through its eyes, as infinities collide, collapse, and are born again. Possibilities swirl. Blood-raw potential engulfs her. When she goes to find her hands, she sees nothing. She tries to breathe and so sucks her scream back in, the noise inhaling in reverse, swallowing up into her suddenly, like LCL rushing into her capillaries. She chokes, thrashing in the white belly of this Angel, panicking, unable to find up or down or the how of her where and—

You know why you're seeing this. It wants you to involve yourself, to give in. It shows you the only thing you still love. It tempts you with her life, her pain, more real than you've ever felt before.

She thrashes. The power is running out. When the power dies, she will die. The monster will die. You will die.

She will die. She will die. She will die and rot in this endless never-space.

Your daughter will die.

And with that realization, you finally give in.

Fight, you. One and 02.


	16. Chapter 16

It was 2009 and Rei Ayanami stood in a field outside Hakone, Japan, her head back, her eyes on the stars. She was eight years old, at least for now. The stars were much older. Some of them were likely dead—spluttering things whose last rays would not reach Earth until Japan, Hakone, and the field around her were all long gone, too. Rei wondered what she would be when those dead glimmers finally reached her.

The wind blew. The dirt between her toes was solid. Behind her, a fire hungered its logs with quick snap-cracks.

"Rei."

"Yes, sir?"

"Have a seat."

"Yes, sir."

She returned to her seat, sitting with her hands in her lap while she watched the fire. They had found the logs earlier in the day, when they were still a tree, and she had helped hold the tools while he chopped it down, split it up, and hauled it back to the camp. She had set up their tents on her own, folding the canvas between the flexing poles and securing the guide wires to the Earth with a mallet. As the planet spun further and the shadows grew longer, he started the flame with a splash of lighter fluid.

Now they sat, either side of it, their chairs before the entrances to their separate tents. The flames reflected in the lenses of his glasses and in the red of her eyes. Above the fire, a steel kettle steamed. The kettle was new, pulled form its plastic just to make this meal. She imagined the taste of the rice now cooking with in it. She imagined the kettle cooling in the aftermath. She imagined it in three hundred years, its surface rusted to nothing.

She looked at her commander. His hands were bare. This was before the gloves—before he gave a part of himself to save her life. "Is it what you hoped for?" he said.

"Part of it," she said.

"What is different?"

Rei looked around at the camp, at the taller grasses and trees beyond the boundaries of the carefully tended site. "There are still people here."

Her commander nodded. "I understand."

"Is it what you hoped for?"

"It's what I expected," he replied.

Rei watched the fire crackle, and found she had nothing more to say.

((()))

Asuka Langley Soryu fell awake. Her eyes opened to the unfamiliar sight of a Nerv hospital ceiling. The evening light of the GeoFront washed in through the bay windows to her left. To her right sat Rei Ayanami, perched on a stool, a book closed in her lap. Asuka looked at her. Ayanami looked back, a faded bruise on her cheek.

Neither girl spoke. The bedside ECG monitor beeped in time with the Second Child's heartbeat. Finally, Asuka spoke.

"What in the hell is going on?"

"You are in the hospital."

"Obviously." Asuka threw the covers off, realizing that she was naked. She tore the taped heart monitor off her arm. The machine's beeping switched to a flatline drone. "Why?"

Before Ayanami could reply, the door behind her slid aside and the room was suddenly filled with half a dozen hulking Section 2 agents, hands in their jackets, no doubt around the grips of their pistols. They halted when they saw no immediate danger, hesitation obvious in their body language.

Asuka capitalized. She pulled up the cover and screamed. "Get the hell out of here!"

They got the hell out of there. When the door was closed again, Asuka flopped back on the bed, suddenly tired. Was she dehydrated? How long had she been here?

"You've been asleep for two days," Ayanami said. "Perhaps longer."

"What does that mean? What happened to the Angel?"

"Then you don't remember."

Asuka realized the other pilot was right. She tried to focus on the battle, to remember any speck of it. She remembered sortieing. She remembered charging the Angel, but then things got hazy.

No, not hazy. Blank. Completely blank.

White.

She lolled her head and looked at Ayanami. "What are you even doing here?"

"I decided I would stay with you," she said.

"You don't owe me that."

The door opened again, and a doctor stepped in, clipboard in hand.

"I decided that I do," Ayanami said.

((()))

Hyuga hung up the receiver and turned on his stool. "The Second Child is finally awake. Preliminary exam is on its way, but apparently she can't remember anything about the battle."

Misato nodded. She sat in the back of the armored surveillance vehicle, in a steel chair meant for a soldier's ass. It hurt, but she didn't care. The crisis and subsequent clean-up had kept her either on her feet or passed out on a cot for the past two days. She'd been so busy that she hadn't been home. The soles of her feet hurt so badly, she thought she would sit on nails just to give them a rest.

"I assume Dr. Akagi has the report, too?" she said.

"I imagine so, ma'am."

"Good. Tell her I want to hear findings as soon as she's capable." She pulled off one of her rubberized gloves and massaged the bridge of her nose. "Phrase it better, please."

"Always, ma'am."

More temporary amnesia. It had been the same with Shinji after his first sortie, when Unit 01 had gone rampant. Berserker, she had whispered at the time—a word that came to her mind unbidden. It had fit, perhaps too well. It had been terrifying. Unnatural.

In time, she had rationalized it. They all had. Long conversations with Rits—no, Dr. Akagi, she reminded herself—had slowly re-contextualized the bloody, rampant destruction of Unit 01's freshman outing as a fluke. Units 01 and 00 weren't production models. They were prone to glitches. An Evangelion was a complicated creation, after all. A bio-mechanical wonder, the apex of all war machines, with more moving parts and subsystems than she could begin to comprehend.

Besides, even Unit 00 had malfunctioned in a start-up test, thrashing wildly until it lost power. Wasn't that essentially the same thing that Unit 01 had done back then? Wild thrashing. Unthinking, unreasoning momentum that had carried it through to victory.

It almost made enough sense for her to believe it. Not quite, but almost.

Then Unit 02 came along. Dependable Unit 02. No start-up glitches, no idiosyncrasies. No berserking, whatever that meant.

Unit 02 had allayed her fears. Evangelions weren't barely-tamed monsters. They were machines. Units 00 and 01 were anomalies, not the norm.

Misato climbed out of the back of the surveillance tank and stepped across the roadway. Around her, UN soldiers directed traffic, keeping the flood of civilian cars and clean-up vehicles down to a manageable trickle. She stepped up to a guardrail and looked out across Tokyo-3. Even from this high up, she could hear the industrial washers scrapping the pavement and buildings clean, could still smell the overwhelming copper tang of the blood that coated the central districts.

She brought her field glasses to her eyes and peered down at the crimson sentinel that crouched in the center of it all. Its hands had dug furrows from the street beneath it, and it wore a temporary restraint around its broad shoulders. It was scheduled for relocation to the geo-front later that afternoon—the transportation rigging was already in place—but they still hadn't cleaned the blood off it.

Nor had they found a way to close its mouth.

_Not monsters, just machines._

Looking at the fangs in Unit 02's mouth, bright white against its gore-slick helmet, Misato found it more difficult than ever to accept her own lie.

((()))

The analysis room was dark, showing nothing beyond the faces caught in the light of the display table—Sub-Commander Fuyutski, Commander Ikari, Dr. Akagi, and Lieutenant Ibuki. The light on their faces flickered in time with the looped images playing between them. First black and white, then a torrent of red.

Fuyutski spoke up. "We understand that the past two days have been hectic. This was an unexpected development. We are, all of us, just trying to wrap our heads around it."

There was no sound to the images, but they had all heard it in the moment, and would never forget it. The shredding tear as the Angel's body came apart. The electrostatic roar of Unit 02 pulling itself free, one hand clawing the gap. Unit 01 was behind it, seemingly falling through the gap wedged by its sister unit's rage.

"Unit 02 is silent. From our best calculations, it spent roughly an hour in the sea of Dirac." Dr. Akagi smoothed a sheet on her clipboard. "Unit 01 displays two hours. The reason for the discrepancy isn't clear."

"It could be that the Dirac sea bends time as well as space, to a degree proportional with how many experiential entities are consumed within it," Ibuki said. No one seemed to notice.

Akagi continued. "Most of Unit 02's time within the Angel was spent thrashing about, wasting energy. It lost all reserve power roughly three minutes into its disappearance. When it reemerged, it did so without power."

"And we have no way of knowing what happened within the plug," Fuyutski said.

"Correct. The plug recorder died with the unit's power."

Fuyutski glanced at Ikari. The Commander's eyes were hidden, the lenses of his glasses reflecting the spray of gore looping on the table below. Fuyutski looked to Dr. Akagi's assistant. "Lieutenant, would you mind stepping outside?" he said.

To her credit, Ibuki did not look stunned. She gave a curt bow, gathered her things, and exited the room. The door slid shut behind her. A moment later, the light above the doorframe blinked green. The room was secure.

Fuyutski did not waste time. "Is there a chance the pilot dis-incorporated at any point?"

"There is certainly a chance. However, I believe what the Second Child experienced is much like what happened during Unit 01's first sortie—a high-level, one-sided synchronization event that has left her with temporary amnesia."

"Will she recover her memories?"

"That's unknown at this time. Shinji never—" Akagi caught herself. "The First Child never regained his memory. Or if he did, he's kept it from us."

"What about Unit 01?"

"It has already been moved back to the cage. No anomalous functionality or contaminants were detected. Its pilot is already out of recovery."

"How did it get free?"

"In theory, opening the sea of Dirac exposed the other dimensional space to the laws of our reality, making the interior of the Angel a bounded space existing in three dimensions. Unit 01 was likely sucked out in the aftermath of Unit 02's attack."

The table switched views, pausing the looped footage at the moment Unit 02 ripped completely free of its dimensional prison. Fuyustki and Akagi looked and saw Commander Ikari's fingers touching the table, refocusing the footage. He enlarged the image of Unit 01, falling free from the tear just behind Unit 02. He enlarged it again, so that the footage filled the screen. In the center was a view of Unit 02's hand clutching the forearm of Unit 01, hauling it free in its wake.

"It was not sucked out," Ikari said. "It was pulled by Unit 02."

Fuyutski looked at the image. He felt stupid thinking of the word 'pulled' in this situation, the science of which seemed so far removed from that simple verb. But there it was before him. Unit 02 pulling Unit 01 out of the Angel.

"That seems significant," Fuyutski said.

Akagi was silent.

Ikari stood away from the table and straightened his uniform. "Fuyutski: handle the rest of this, please."

"Yes, Commander."

Commander Ikari left the room.

((()))

Asuka stood in front of the window, looking out at the GeoFront. The doctor had spoken with her at length, asking her to describe her time within the Angel, her escape, all of it. She gave as much information as she could, which wasn't much. She recalled flashes of sensation, blurts of pain, and moments of elation—all now fading quickly in the harsh light of consciousness. The more she attempted to bring the memories into focus, the quicker they slipped away, as fruitless as trying to grip water. Everything faded back into that flat, infinite white.

Ayanami was still there. She had sat through the doctor's examination. She hadn't moved as Asuka ate her paltry hospital lunch, and hadn't moved as she got up and moved to the window. Asuka could see her now, a faint reflection in the window pane. Watching her.

"What?" Asuka finally said, turning around.

"What?" Ayanami replied.

"You've been sitting there like a weirdo for an hour."

"I've been here for seven hours."

"Just watching me sleep!?"

"And reading."

"Weirdo!"

Ayanami stared at her. "I decided to stay with you."

"Why?"

"Kensuke said it would mean a lot to him if I did."

"Kensuke said that," Asuka said, more to work out the concept in words than to gain any clarification. Ayanami was still hanging around with Kensuke Aida, of all people. A miserable little military nerd, and a creep at that. Mostly, she thought it was disgusting. Another part of her—the less-rational and much louder part—felt jealous that Wondergirl had someone, and had shared time with him.

"Yes," Ayanami said.

"So you're here because the smallest Stooge is giving you lessons in humanity."

"I am here because I am your friend."

Asuka laughed. "Since when?"

"Since you asked me to be your friend."

"When did that happen?"

"When we met." Ayanami was doing her eye contact thing again, locking on with those red beams and not letting go. It was the most unnerving aspect of the girl's personality. "You said we should be friends. You said it would be 'convenient.'"

She remembered perfectly: her, standing on the concrete landscaping wall; Ayanami, sitting on a park bench, trying to read; the class, huddled around the new pilot-child from Germany. She remembered the way the other kids viewed her most of all. They were fascinated. Kids wanted to be her friend. Associating with her quickly became a form of social capital. The Stooges began to sell photos of her. All the gossip, the adulation, the attention…

And none of it was real. The kids were so vapid, shallow, and above all, stupid. There were stupid mean girls who disliked her for being new and exotic. There were stupid kind girls who looked up to her and watched her every move. There were stupid boys who pestered her and stupid boys who watched her from afar. Absolute idiots, all of them.

She needed a friend, a peer. She had thought, for a moment, that she could find that in Rei Ayanami. She had approached, held up by the mixed adoration and loathing of her classmates, and extended an olive branch. Asuka Langley Soryu, who had never before asked to be friends with anyone, making a public display of reaching out to the strangest girl in Tokyo-3.

_You must be Rei Ayanami, the pilot of the prototype. I'm Asuka. Asuka Langley Soryu. Let's be good friends._

_What for?_

_Because it would be convenient. You know what I mean._

_If I am ordered to, I will do it._

Asuka remembered all of it. She never thought Ayanami would care. She certainly seemed like she didn't at the time. Had she decided, at some point between then and now, to befriend her? Did someone actually order her to? Was that a thing that happened in Wondergirl's life, where a commander ordered her to have _friends_?

Was this the olive branch coming back to her?

"I don't even remember that," Asuka said. "If I did, I was probably just trying to be nice to a co-worker. Don't read so much into things."

"I don't understand."

"Rei," Asuka said, "we're not actually _friends_. We just work together. What do we even have in common?"

Ayanami was silent, watching her.

"I hit you," Asuka said. "Do you not remember that? I hit you in the face. Why would you ever want to be my friend?"

"You felt angry," Ayanami said. "You didn't mean it."

"You shouldn't read into things so much," Asuka repeated. She turned away, back to the window. "I'm fine now. You don't have to stick around."

There was silence. A moment later, Ayanami's reflection knelt, collected its belongings, and left the room. Asuka looked back at the place where her copilot had been, a too-faint part of her wondering if she was in the wrong.

((()))

Shinji Ikari laid on his bed, thinking. He had been released from the hospital a day previous. He decided to take the day off school. He had not called in nor had, as far as he knew, any of the Nerv agents on his security detail. He simply hadn't gone.

His cell phone rang once, early in the day. He made no move to answer it. Probably just the school. Well, if Asuka was going to quit school, then why should he keep going? Why maintain the façade? No one cared if he was educated anyway, not really. The people in charge of him didn't need an educated Shinji Ikari any more than they needed a happy one.

He laid in bed and watched the lines of the sun grow shorter across the unfamiliar floor of this new home. Asuka had saved him. He remembered perfectly the moment where the white gave way to reality again and he was pulled free, Unit 02 emerging in front of him. He could still hear the roar of the other machine.

He remembered the feeling of disorientation after Unit 01 had gone crazy, of lying in bed just as he was now and having those experiences come crashing back into his mind. He remembered how afraid he had been, and he wondered if she would feel the same way.

He thought of his father, standing in Misato's kitchen. _It was your mother's will that you pilot the Evangelion. She helped design it, and it was always her wish for you to be its pilot. So in asking you here, I was attempting to honor her wishes. To see if you were a son worth having._

Shinji lifted his hand above him, clenched it into a fist, and played his eyes between his hand and the ceiling beyond it.

He thought of Asuka lying next to him, tears pushing through her closed eyelids. _Mama_ , she had said, in that part of the memory he could never remember without shame.

The sunlight lengthened again as noon gave way to evening. His phone rang in that span, three calls, one after another after another. No voicemail. Kensuke, he guessed, wanting to hang out.

He didn't answer. The calls stopped coming.

She wouldn't be scared, he thought. Not Asuka.

But she had been. He had heard the terror in her voice when that Angel pulled her into itself. He'd felt the fear, too—the raw horror of being ripped free of reality and consumed whole. It was more than a person should have to bear alone.

He rolled onto his side and looked at his belongings, still taped up in their boxes. The sunlight creeped across them, its fiery edge lighting on the clasps of his cello case. He stared at it for a long moment.

The clasps popped open under his fingers and the lid sprang up. He lifted it the rest of the way. His instrument was undamaged from the move. It'd been packed well enough. He lifted it free and set it against his bed, then reached back to get his bow.

And stopped.

A sheet of folded notebook paper lay in the bowl of the case, compressed flat by the weight of the cello. He grabbed it, saw it had handwriting on it. He read the first two lines, then glanced down to check the signature. His eyes went wide. He sat upright, suddenly alert, and went back to the top to read it from the beginning.

_Shinji,_

_My kanji sucks so sorry if I sound like my brain is damaged. I have also never written a letter before in my life. I do not get the point of letters. We email everything anyway. Who needs a stupid letter? But I do not think I can get this to you any other way so here you go._

_They are packing up your things. Misato told me that your dad kicked you out. Do not worry about that. He sucks. My dad sucks, too._

_Even Misato sucks sometimes. The adults do not understand what we are going through. Most of the kids are like that, too. When I think of the other kids in that school, I get so pissed off. I hated listening to their stupid problems. They were always nitpicking and complaining. Even their joy is… How do I write it in Japanese? Narrow? What a pool is when it is not deep enough. They were weak and like children._

_My point is this: We are better than all of them. You and me. We matter. We actually count. All these other people are like… options. To me at least. I am sure they have families or whatever who care about them. Beats me. My family sucks. So does yours._

_You and me? We have each other. No one else. I used to have no one but now I have you. And as I sit here and watch them pack up your things, I want to scream._

_I think I am making a love at you. Is that how you write it? Making a love. I loving you. I think that is right._

_Your biggest hero,_

_Asuka Langley Soryu_

Shinji read it again. When he was done, he read it a third time.

After that, he folded the paper into a neat square, tucked it into his pocket, and stood up. He walked to his front door, quiet in his socked feet, and listened. Usually he could hear the Section Two agents talking outside. Sometimes their laughter would carry through the door into the apartment proper, always a sudden reminder of how restricted his freedoms really were.

Now he heard nothing.

He waited a long moment, and then opened the door and looked out.

No one.

Was this some kind of test? Was a shift change not timed properly?

Calmly, Shinji pulled on his sneakers and left the apartment. There could have been a thousand reasons for the absence, but none of them really mattered. He fully expected to be stopped before he even left the building.

But no one came. Soon he was down the stairs, and then out of the building. Still no one appeared, no black sedan squealing into the parking lot. He kept walking, ending up beyond the complex, on the side of a road. No one.

He kept walking, unsure of how far he would get but certain of his destination.

((()))

Rei found Kensuke Aida right where he said he would be. The park was empty, the last rays of evening clinging to the slides and monkey bars and doing their best to offset the chilly dusk breeze. He was sitting on a park bench and caught sight of her as she approached.

"Hey!" he said. "How'd it go?"

Rei sat next to him. Last time they were here, he told her it was more natural if she sat instead of always standing over him. She sat and told him what had happened, what she had done and said and what Asuka had done and said. As she explained it, Kensuke Aida never looked away from her. That was something she had noticed immediately upon spending time with him. He had no issue maintaining eye contact.

Rei had lived an unnoticed life. Dr. Akagi tested her without comment, without conversation. Commander Ikari spoke with her, but always from a distance, often with his back turned or busy with something unrelated. Sub-Commander Fuyutski, Technician Ibuki, the rest—all kind, all polite, none interested.

The children she went to school with would glance her way and then look away just as quickly, nervous that she had noticed them. Once, two years ago now, Class Representative Horaki had tried speaking with her, but it was a conversation borne of obligation, and so it failed.

Shinji looked at her when she spoke, but he was always hesitant, and she was never sure what to make of him.

But in Kensuke Aida she saw no hesitation, no obligation, and no disinterest. He was fully invested.

"At least you tried, right?" he said, afterwards. "I'm not sure why you wanted to in the first place."

Rei looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Asuka is…" He smiled. "Toji calls her bitchy. Among other things."

"What do you call her?" Rei said.

"She's pretty hard to get along with. Doesn't seem to like anybody. I mean, with the exception of Shinji lately, but look how that turned out." Kensuke shrugged. "I think it's good that you tried to get together and figure things out with her, but I don't know that I would."

Rei watched him. He watched back. Their feet sat next to each other. The wind blew, parting the blades of grass beneath them.

"You're probably my favorite person," he said, smiling.

Rei Ayanami was fourteen years old, at least for now. The sun now setting was much older. It would live a long life, its last rays not destined to reach this park until its slides and monkey bars were long gone, rusted to dust. And for the first time in her life, she did not wonder what she would be when that last light finally found her.

Rei did not smile back. Instead, she leaned in, one hand on his shoulder, and kissed him.

((()))

"Ready to go?" Misato asked.

"Do you have my clothes?" Asuka said, not looking away from the IV as it was pulled from her arm.

Misato gave her a duffel, and ten minutes later they were in her Alpine, cruising home through the city streets. Asuka watched the city pass by outside. "How's my Eva?" she asked.

"Unit 02 is fine," Misato said. "We've moved it back into the cage."

Asuka could feel her guardian looking at her. "What?" she said, not turning.

"Nothing," Misato said, with almost enough conviction to make it convincing.

Neither spoke for the rest of the trip.

When they got home, Asuka went straight to her room. Misato heard the door close and sighed. She walked to the fridge and got her first beer of the night. The kitchen was trashed. Instant food bowls and empty cans littered the table. Dishes piled up in the sink.

Misato pulled out a chair and sat, sipping and looking at the mess. A week without Shinji and look where she was now.

She glanced at the phone, thought about calling Kaji. She hadn't caught up with him since before this crisis began. It felt like weeks had passed, though it'd only been two days. She could stand to see him, could stand to have some company while she drank.

Just then, the phone rang. She hopped up and answered it.

"Katsuragi, go ahead."

"It's me."

Misato smiled and leaned against the wall. "Hello, me. I was actually just about to call you. It's been a long couple of days. You down for a drink?"

"Not right now." Kaji's voice was low. "The Section Two agents working pilot security on Shinji were ordered to stand down."

"What? That doesn't make sense. Who gave the order?"

"No name, but it was designated class A."

Misato frowned. "Commander Ikari, then."

"Him or Fuyutski acting for him." There was a noise in the background, the drone of an engine.

"Are you driving?" Misato asked.

"I'm trying to find him," Kaji said. "I tried his apartment, but he wasn't there. All his things were still there."

Misato stood upright. "What does that mean?"

Pilot security had always been a given. They had never lost him before. Even when he ran away, they never really lost track of him. But now, with him exposed? Anything could happen.

"I'm not sure—" Kaji was saying, as her mind snapped through possibilities.

"Kaji, if something's happened to him I swear to God—"

"I'm trying to find him _right now_ , Katsuragi. Come help me."

"Fine, I'll call you back on my cell." She hung up and began moving, tossing her half-drunk beer in the sink and pulling on her jacket.

There were a number of global forces that didn't appreciate Nerv's unilateral application of the world's finances. Groups both nationally backed and rogue paramilitaries. Plenty of terrorist groups could use one of the chosen Children as a real bargaining chip.

"What's wrong?"

Misato turned and saw Asuka standing against the door frame, having come from her room. She looked concerned.

"Nothing," she said.

"Did something happen to Shinji?"

"No," Misato said, too quickly. She shoved her feet into her shoes. "No, everything's fine."

"You're lying."

"Just go back to your room, Asuka."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Asuka, everything is fine. Just—"

_Pin-pom._

They both stopped and looked at the entranceway, unsure if they'd heard correctly. After a moment, it came again.

_Pin-pom._

The doorbell.

Misato moved but Asuka was faster, darting across the kitchen before she could be stopped. Misato reached for her but couldn't get hold of her. Anything could be behind that door, anything at all.

Asuka threw the door aside, letting in the cooling brush of early night, and with it the sight of a teenage boy standing on their stoop. He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and held it up to her.

"I…" he said, catching his breath from the long trek. "I loving you, too."

Asuka grabbed him and pulled him in, holding him tight to her. "You stupid idiot."

"You pulled me out," he said.

"I know," she said, squeezing him harder and burying her face in his shoulder. "So we're even, then."

"Your kanji is terrible."

"Shut up."

Misato stood behind them, in the foyer, watching. Shinji looked at her from his position being choked against Asuka's shoulder. He blew a strand of red hair away so that he could see clearly.

"Can I come home again?" he asked.

Misato grinned. "You're gonna get me fired."

"Sorry," he said.

"You really shouldn't be," Misato said. She grabbed Asuka by the arm. "C'mon. Drag him in and let him breathe a little."

((()))

In light of not having a bed to sleep in, Misato let them sleep together. Nothing untoward happened, anyway. Just two kids lying in bed, not daring to let one another go.

Asuka laid with his arm across her. They didn't speak, since there was nothing left to say. She closed her eyes and felt herself drifting off, the sounds of Shinji's breathing, the hush of the air conditioner, and the swish of the ceiling fan merging into a singular calming drone that lulled her further from wakefulness. She felt his arm on her, the pillow under her head, the sheets bunched by her legs, and the taste of blood in her mouth as she bit and ripped free of the thing's body, her fingers digging into its form and clawing free, gore spraying across her armor, one with the thing inside and around her and I will be free and she will be safe and you'll never hurt her again you'll never take her from me we will be together forever—

A brush like fingers along her face.

The strained creak of a rope, turning in a dead room.

The whisper of a voice from deep memory. "Asuka, my darling."

Her eyes snapped open and she sat up, a sharp breath that was not quite a scream filling her lungs.

Shinji shot up next to her. "Asuka?"

"My mother." She looked around the room, pulling the covers closer to her chest. Her eyes found Shinji. "I remembered my mother."


	17. Chapter 17

"Synaptic network is offline. Unit 00 is cold."

"Target is on the move again, headed south."

"Projection indicates the target will intercept with Unit 01 in sixty seconds."

The sun was low over the mountains, its rays kissing the flat bottom valley which rested at the base of Mt. Matsushiro's southern slope and washing the shuttered windows of the houses with amber light. The streets were vacant, cicadas buzzed, and a rhythmic thud shook the ground—the tread of an oncoming giant. With each step, its shadow grew across pavement and power lines, parked cars and playgrounds. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Shinji gripped his control yokes. His feed to Unit 00 was static. The voices over his communications link were calm, detached, as if everything was fine. Unit 00 was cold, that's all. No word on Rei. Nothing to worry about, no pilot injured or possibly dead. No devastation of the surrounding buildings, no death toll of bystanders. Just Unit 00—which was cold.

His view of the oncoming target was clear. A blackened silhouette before the setting sun. A mirrored shadow of his own Unit.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

"The pilot is still inside, isn't he?" he said, not caring if it was aloud or not. He blink-clicked the image, magnifying it till all he saw was the target's face—heavy black armor around white-hot eyes.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

"Another kid," he said, "just like me."

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The pallet rifle was firm in his grip. He positioned the targeting reticule in the center, directly over Unit 03's head. His finger hovered over the switch, and with a wash of cold like ice in his veins, he realized he couldn't bring himself to pull it.

With a roar from a nightmare, the target leapt forward.

((()))

Six days earlier, the suffusion of Tokyo 3's massed streetlights reached through the bedroom window, a blue midnight glow that kept voices to whispers and made one lean in to speak. On the bedside table, the alarm clock blinked from 12:59 to 1:00. Shinji sat on top of the covers, cross legged. Asuka sat in front of him, one arm resting around her raised leg, her chin on her knee.

"Your mother," he said.

She didn't look at him. "Yes."

He thought about the last time her mother had been brought up, when he had thrown it in her face. A fight had followed, then a kiss. He didn't want either right now, so he stayed quiet.

"What do you remember about your mother?" she asked.

Shinji remembered the last time he had heard that question, spoken by his father in the moment he had decided to remove him from the Katsuragi residence. Now that he had managed to get away from that and return, the question had resurfaced.

He shook his head. "Not much. I can't even really remember her face. She died when I was four, so…"

"No memories at all?"

"No." He frowned. "I remember her voice. No words, just the sound of it."

Asuka stared at the blanket in front of her. Her arm flexed, pulling her leg in closer to her chest. Shinji wanted to reach out and hold her hand, but the want refused to become action. He had felt so close to her just hours before, when he stood in the doorway and told her he loved her, but now he did not know what to do.

"How about you?" he said.

She shook her head. "Nothing, really," she lied.

"Except for just now," he said.

She took a deep breath. "I was asleep, or getting close. You know that thing where you're close and then you feel like you drop suddenly, and then you're wide awake again?"

"Sure."

"That happened, only when I dropped, I could swear I heard…"

As her words trailed off, Shinji reached out to her, his fingertips brushing through her hair as he made for her shoulder. "Asuka—"

She twisted away, out of his reach, and planted her feet on the floor so that she sat on the edge of the bed. She ran her hands up her arms, hugging herself. Shinji dropped his hand to the covers. He searched for something to say.

"My first sortie," he said, at last, "Unit 01 lost control. I couldn't remember any of it at first. It took till a few days later, after I got out of the hospital and moved in here, for it to come back to me. It hit all at once. I remembered it as if I had been the one doing it, not the Eva."

He watched her back, finding no sign of whether or not his words had hit home, or even been relevant at all.

"If something like that happens to you," he said, respecting her enough to not guess that she had just experienced it, "I want you to know that I get it. You can talk to me about it."

She looked at him, sideways. He hoped that she would admit it, or tell him something new that he could help with, or just give him some response that would let him orient himself in this chaotic new development.

"I want to be alone," she said instead.

The words hit like ice, but he recovered quickly enough. "Alright," he said, and stood and left, closing the door behind him. He made his way to the living room and laid down, sprawling on the carpet. He watched the ceiling overhead and tried to figure out what had just happened.

((()))

The weekend passed. Shinji did not leave the Katsuragi residence, hoping that Asuka would emerge from her room for more than a bathroom break, meal, or an hour or so of silent TV watching. Though he was happy to be back here, he assumed it was a temporary arrangement. They would not let him live here, after all. So when the doorbell rang on Sunday afternoon, he fully expected to open it and find a wall of black suits and sunglasses, ready to rip him away from his reclaimed life.

Instead, he found his belongings, dumped unceremoniously on the stoop, repacked into their moving boxes. His bed was there, too, its frame disassembled, the mattress propped agains the wall. A pair of moving men were already walking away to the elevators.

"Uh, thank you!" he said.

"Make up your damn mind!" one of them shouted over his shoulder.

"Sorry," he said.

Shinji brought the boxes and bedframe inside, storing them in his room once more. He wrestled the mattress in last, grunting and heaving it through the apartment.

Misato found him as he was finishing up. She leaned on the door frame, a beer held at her side. "These just arrive?" she said.

"Yeah," Shinji replied.

"Guess you're back full time now," she said.

Shinji looked down at the boxes. Seeing them there, taped up and worn from two moves in as many weeks, he wondered if this delivery was as close to an apology as his father would ever get.

"Guess so," he said.

((()))

"I feel like this whole thing is a trap," Misato said, later that evening. She looked at the drink in front of her, at the finished meal, the plates set at the edge of the table to be taken away. "Like any moment I'm going to get the call and he'll be whisked away again, back to whatever crappy hole the Commander forced him into."

"Interesting."

"'Interesting' like 'Interesting, Misato. You might be right.'?"

"'Interesting' like 'Interesting, but you're probably wrong.'"

"You're sure?"

Kaji shrugged and sipped his drink. The restaurant had a thin crowd tonight, and the background conversation was a quiet murmur—couples leaning to speak over tables cloistered in private booths, co-workers drinking to recover from the work week, and old friends catching up. Misato thought of herself and Kaji, and wondered which archetype they fit best in.

Probably a blend of the three, honestly.

"I don't know anything for sure…" he began.

"Best guess will do."

He smiled, but it was tired. "I think Commander Ikari hasn't been himself lately."

"You think?" she scoffed. "The guy barely cares about his kid for months and then suddenly he's in my apartment telling the kid what to do, where to live, who to be friends with. Since when does he care about his son's welfare?"

"I don't think he does," Kaji said. Misato moved to speak, and he stopped her with a wave of the hand. "Let me explain. He cares about what his son can do. Shinji the teenaged boy isn't important to him whatsoever, but Shinji the Evangelion pilot matters more than he would let on."

"Shinji the Evangelion pilot disobeyed a direct order and got swallowed by an Angel along with Asuka," Misato countered.

"True. But he got in the seat."

Misato laughed. "The kid has done nothing but what we ask him to do for months. We haven't had a problem motivating him to 'get in the seat' since, what, July?"

"In that time, has there been much to challenge him?"

"You mean beyond the giant monsters?"

"I'm not saying that the battles haven't been stressful. They are. But he has triumphed. We have won every single time, and no one he knows has died. His life is incredibly stable."

"Yeah, because I'm good at my job."

"Oh, you're a model homemaker."

"Damn right." Misato grinned, wondering if this evening might lean a little more in the 'couples' direction than she initially thought. Then she sobered. "So what are you saying? The Commander threw a curveball at Shinji to test him? See if he could deal with adversity?"

"It's a possibility."

"And if that's true? Did he pass the test?"

Kaji shrugged. "He's living with you, isn't he?"

"Yeah, I suppose so," she said.

"Besides," he continued, "I think you'd know more than me. I wasn't the one who got questioned by the committee today."

Misato raised an eyebrow. "See, it's things like that that make me wonder what your job actually entails."

"I'm a jack of all trades. Come on. What'd they ask you?"

"The same old question that comes up every time we discussed Unit 01's incident. 'Does the pilot remember anything?' Only this time they wondered if the Angel had tried to make contact with Unit 02 or Asuka."

"Interesting. What did you tell them?"

"I told them that I'm not certain, on either count. But to my best knowledge, no, Asuka remembers nothing."

"Do you believe that?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. She looked at her drink. "I want to believe it."

There was a pause between them, as each tried to make sense of where to take the evening from there. She looked at him, he looked at her. The moment came to an end when she grabbed one of the folders from the table between them.

"Tell me about this again," she said. "What'd you call it, the Dummy Plug?"

Kaji gave a smile that went unnoticed. "Yeah," he said, reaching out to elaborate.

((()))

Monday morning, Shinji returned to school. Misato offered to drive him but he declined, saying he would rather walk. He found Asuka before he left. She was sitting in the living room. The TV was on, some commercial playing. He looked in on her, trying to find any words that didn't sound idiotic. _I'm going to school_ was by far the worst option—she knew that already. Then what? _I'll see you later_? _Have a good day_? _Hope you figure out whatever it is that's wrong with you_?

Each time he came close to saying one, it turned to ash on his tongue. There was no point, he realize. He rested his hand on the doorframe. She switched channels on the TV, not looking at him.

 _I love you_ , he thought. He imagined saying it aloud and immediately felt stupid for it. He'd said the words once, and she had embraced him, but in the light of day after a weekend of distance from her, he didn't know if he'd ever be able to say them again. He was certain he believed them, but Asuka's scorn had a way of turning even his most fervent beliefs into childish, nonsensical thought putty. Just the thought of that kind of rejection from her was enough to stay his words.

He turned and left for school. The front door swished shut behind him.

Asuka set the remote down and turned to look at where he had stood.

Misato stepped out of her bedroom, pulling on her jacket. "Shinji leave yet?"

"Just did." Asuka turned back to the TV.

Misato watched her as she zipped her jacket. She grabbed her keys from her dresser and pocketed them. "Y'know," she said, "I've got a lot of work today, but if you want, you can come with me. We can check on the repairs. See if we can't figure out when the world's top pilot will be ready for her triumphant return."

"Sure," Asuka said.

((()))

He found Kensuke at the corner of Ozawa and Prefect, just as he always used to. Kensuke saw him and waved. "Shinji! What are you doing here?"

"I'm living back home again," he said.

"That's awesome. Think you'll be back in our class?"

"I don't really know."

"You should try. Ask Ms. Misato to pull some strings, y'know?"

"I don't know if she can do that, Kensuke."

"Sure she can. Have her institute martial law."

"I don't think she can do that, either."

Kensuke grinned. "I'm really glad you're here. Rei's been missing you, too."

Shinji frowned. "What?"

Before he could ask anything else, he heard a loud "Shinji!" from behind him, and received a clubbing blow to the back from Toji Suzuhara, and any questions he had were gone.

"What are you doing here?" Toji said.

Kensuke answered for him. "He's back with Misato."

"Ah, no way! Back in the babe zone!" Toji said, slamming a fist into Shinji's shoulder.

"Guys," Shinji said, "you've gotta stop it with that."

"Yeah, Toji," Kensuke said. "Stop with the babes talk."

Toji frowned. "Oh, okay. I see it. Can't talk about babes anymore. Can't talk about naughty bits."

"I just don't want to be rude," Kensuke said.

"Whatever, man. You're a traitor to your own sex." Toji jerked a thumb at Kensuke. "See this guy, Shinji? He passed up a trip to New Yokosuka to see a battleship, all on account of a girl."

"Oh, whatever." Kensuke started walking. "I'm not going to stand here and be late."

Shinji walked with Kensuke. Toji followed, bouncing his basketball. Shinji wondered what this talk of a girl was about. Being away from the class for a week had pretty much wiped any up-to-date knowledge he had on his friend group. He couldn't mean Rei, right?

Before he could follow up on it, Kensuke looked at him. "Have you heard about the third branch?"

"What third branch?"

"Of Nerv. The American facility."

"There's an American Nerv?"

"Not anymore there isn't," Kensuke said. He leaned in. "From what I can tell from my dad's email, it's totally gone. An explosion or something. You didn't hear?"

Shinji shook his head. "Misato didn't say anything about it."

"Yeah. Apparently, it had something to do with Unit 04, and now the Americans want to get rid of Unit 03 and transfer it here."

Shinji frowned, trying to make sense of all this. Kensuke had been wrong about things before—dragging information illegally off his dad's work computer often caused him to get a less-than-complete picture of what was going on at Nerv—but he just as often knew more than Shinji did. Despite being a pilot, no one told him much of anything.

"Do you think they'll send a pilot along with it?" Kensuke said. "Like Asuka?"

Toji spoke up. "That's just what I need in my life—another weirdo."

Kensuke looked over his shoulder. "Just keep dribbling."

"Your mom dribbles real good," Toji said. He kept dribbling.

They were coming up on the intersection of Watanabe and Inoki. The traffic was thinning as they neared the school.

"I don't know," Shinji said. "When is it supposed to arrive? Do you know—"

Kensuke caught sight of something ahead and stopped him. "Oh, crap. I forgot. I don't want to talk military stuff around her anymore." He looked Shinji in the eyes. "Sorry. We'll catch up on it later."

"Around who?" Shinji said, then stopped as he caught sight of her.

((()))

Rei Ayanami saw Kensuke, her co-pilot, and their friend. She said hello to each of them.

"Kensuke. Pilot Ikari. Mr. Suzuhara." She looked at Kensuke, and asked him the question she did every morning before school. "Do you want to walk with me again?"

"Definitely," he said, like always.

As they walked, Rei stayed close to Kensuke. She kept her eyes ahead, and fell into the comfortable silence she normally had around Kensuke. She listened, though, as he talked with Ikari, about grades and the differences between their classes.

She looked over periodically and caught Ikari looking back at her. He would always glance away in those moments. It was the same look he had any time she made him uncomfortable. In her life, Rei had learned what it looked like when someone was uncomfortable around her.

But what was there to be uncomfortable about? She remembered walking with him and Pilot Soryu, weeks ago, to the GeoFront after school. The two had been close then, and Rei found none of it uncomfortable. She had told Soryu, in that moment, that Ikari was her boyfriend. She had been right, even though Soryu screamed and tried to deny it.

Was Ikari worried about her? About Kensuke? Or was he just surprised?

She kept quiet the rest of the way to school. Behind her, she heard Suzuhara's basketball striking the pavement, keeping time with their footfalls. Thud. Thud. Thud.

((()))

Misato had been kept in meetings all morning—something to do with the Second Branch in the US—and Asuka had been left to her own devices. However, Misato had promised they would discuss Unit 02 today, and she kept her promise. The first moment she had free, Misato brought them down to the cage, where Dr. Akagi was working.

The conversation did not go well.

"What the hell do you mean it'll be 'kept in stasis'?" Asuka said. "I'm perfectly fine!"

Doctor Akagi did not look up from her datapad. "No one is questioning your health, Pilot. It's your Evangelion we are worried about."

They were sitting in the observation box overlooking Unit 02's cage. Below them, technicians in orange jumpsuits covered the head and shoulders of Unit 02, prying up the crimson plating and sinking heavy data uplink cables into its superstructure. If it weren't for the humans around it to provide scale, it would have looked like a costumed person undergoing brain surgery.

Misato touched Asuka's shoulder. "Unit 02 needs to go in stasis. You've got to trust us on this."

"Why?" she said. "Unit 01 went nuts, right? In his first mission."

She caught a surprised look shared between Misato and Doctor Akagi. She wasn't supposed to know about that, huh? Well, good.

"Yeah," she said. "He told me about it. So what gives? He was never taken off the combat roster."

"At that time, Unit 01 was our only functioning Evangelion. Unit 00 hadn't been cleared yet, and we needed a response force for the early attacks," Misato said. "Now that we have a fleet of three, we can afford to be more cautious with yours."

Asuka shrugged her shoulder away from Misato's hand. "The other two aren't even Evas. They're a prototype and a test type. They're different."

Doctor Akagi spoke up. "Actually, that's one of my worries. We expect 00 and 01 to act up from time to time. They have glitches."

"Yeah, because they aren't Evas. Duh."

"They're Evas, just not production models," Akagi continued. "And I know them well enough to know their shortcomings. But Unit 02 should not have any of the same issues. The fact that it did is a problem, and one that I want to investigate. If I had more firsthand experience with it, my assessment might be different."

"So I'm off the roster because my Eva is sprained?" Asuka smirked. "How is that my problem?"

"It's not," Misato said. "We're trying to get through this the best we can. We just want you to be safe."

"I can handle risk," Asuka said. She pointed at Akagi. "It's not my fault that this lady can't do her job properly."

That got Akagi's attention. She set down her datapad.

"Asuka—" Misato started, but stopped when Akagi held up a hand.

"This lady," the doctor said, "is thinking about a lot more than your safety. Do you know what all this is?"

Around them, display screens flickered and buzzed with the constant stream of data from her Evangelion's sensor arrays. Some of it was raw binary code, some of it was from radar and LIDAR bounce-back, and some of it was a riot of infrared blooms. Several screens even showed decompressed audio files.

"Unit 02's data inload," Asuka said.

"Correct," Akagi said. "Despite the plug's mission recorder having blanked, there were still a number of passive sensors that were active during the Unit's time submerged in the Angel's inner dimension, and every bit of that data is here being downloaded, copied, and catalogued."

"Why?" Asuka said.

"Because the first step to beating something is understanding how it works, and right now we have a very incomplete picture of how that Angel did what it did. Of course, you don't remember anything. Shinji didn't, either, after his Unit experienced the same glitch."

Misato crossed her arms and looked down at the cage. Asuka frowned. What was she nervous about?

"I need to know everything that happened during that missing time, including what happened outside the Eva and what happened inside. And since you can't tell me, I have to comb through all of this, which takes time, and for that time you will be off the combat roster." Akagi slowly took off her glasses as she spoke, folded them, and placed them in her labcoat pocket. She looked at Asuka. "Unless, of course, you have something you've remembered that makes me doing all this work unnecessary. Do you?"

_A door swinging wide, the light beyond doused red in the haze of her memory. A rope creaking in the stillborn air. Asuka, my darling._

Asuka narrowed her eyes. "No," she said, "I don't. And I don't have to stand here and take this crap from some dyed blonde bitch!"

"Asuka!" Misato said, but it was too late. The Second Child had already turned and stormed out of the room. The door slid closed behind her.

Misato looked at Ritsuko. "That was a little much."

"I agree. She insulted a superior."

"I meant a little much on your end. You didn't have to call her out like that."

"It was entirely appropriate. Unit 03 will be here by the end of the week. You will have enough Evangelions to defend this city without Unit 02, and I have more than enough work to do in the meantime. I can't spend time coddling a child."

"I'm not asking you to coddle her. I'm asking you to be a human being. She's just a kid."

"The fact that you're comfortable being lied to is your own failing," the doctor replied, turning back to her work.

((()))

Shinji returned home that evening to find an apartment of closed doors and a note on the refrigerator.

_Working late. We already had dinner. Please feed Pen-Pen. –Your Brave Commander_

He did as he was told. Fish came out of a can, went into a bowl, and were promptly devoured. He compacted the can and placed it in the recycling, then stood in the kitchen for a moment. He had gone for a walk after school, trying to clear his head and make some sense of his situation. But a day away had not solved his problem. Despite spending most of every lesson thinking through possible words, he didn't have a solution. Nothing he had thought of on his walk sounded anything but stupid, either, and he had imagined her rolling her eyes or turning away from every one of them.

He moved to the hallway, and stood in front of Asuka's door. He thought about knocking, but wasn't sure how she would take it. He thought about opening it, but that had the same problem. Maybe it would be allowed if he was trying to comfort her—and he desperately wanted to. But every plan he had completely sucked.

Maybe a plan wasn't what he needed. Maybe what he needed was action.

Before he could second-guess himself, he raised his fist and knocked on the door.

"Go away," came the muffled voice.

His fist hovered over the wood, hesitating. His bold action wilted and died. Eventually he dropped it and went to his room.

In her room, Asuka heard him walk away. She rolled onto her side, looked out the window, and wished he had just opened the door.


	18. Chapter 18

The priority commuter train consisted of first class interior cabins, each containing a pair of twin-passenger padded seats facing one another, and a window through which to view the transition from street-level in Tokyo-3 to the cavern of the GeoFront. Illumination tunnels bored into the ceiling allowed the cavern to maintain a similar day/night cycle to the city above, and the transition would have been as seamless as entering and exiting an above-ground tunnel if it weren't for the fact that the buildings suddenly sprouted down instead of up.

That this was one of the least-absurd elements of his life was a fact that Kozo Fuyutski found both funny and daunting in equal measure. More days than not since 2001, he had mused that he was living in some false reality. He wondered if he had really died back then from some mundane tragedy—a car accident, perhaps, or a freak heart attack—and this was just a fever dream he experienced at death, its duration indefinitely extended by the chemical trauma his dying brain inflicted on itself. It would go some way toward explaining the giant monsters, future cities, super computers, conspiracies, and world-ending disasters that had entered the life of an otherwise ordinary professor of metaphysical biology.

Aside from all the evidence of his five senses, perhaps the main thing keeping him from genuinely believing those daydream musings was that he could not imagine that his brain would make him the second-place player in the drama. If this world truly was his hallucination, he certainly wouldn't be spending it following around the underachieving student activist that he had once bailed out of jail.

For his part, Commander Ikari spent the train ride looking out the window. They were with one another almost every hour of every day. Fuyutski did the boring work and helped him brainstorm as Ikari managed the dozens of sudden crises that arose each week, but the Sub-Commander often wondered how useful he really was.

In the early days, Fuyutski had worked hands-on with major projects. Each had led to something incredible, be it the Evangelions, the Magi, or the defense grid in the city above. For a time, it had seemed that he and Ikari were, if not friends, then at least colleagues of a sort. He'd had objections to the financing, to the way Seele fleeced the world's economy to funnel everything here, but he made what peace he could and moved forward. The young ones had all joked with him. "Old Man Kozo," they had called him, but under the jabs there had been respect. They were all twenty-somethings, dragged out of academia and thrust into this shadowy bio-tech startup. They had needed guidance, and he had enjoyed giving it.

Then the deaths came—first Yui, then Naoko, and the belated suffering of Kyoko—and things changed. The projects shifted, the organization changed names, and where before there had been labcoats, now there were suddenly uniforms. He was no longer a professor, but a Sub-Commander. Before he knew it, all the young minds were gone except one, and Fuyutski was left with Ikari.

"The Americans are being very forward," Ikari said suddenly.

Fuyutski looked up, jerked from his reverie. "Can you blame them?" he said.

"Pushing the third Unit into our care on such short notice. It makes things inconvenient."

"True, but at least it gives us an excuse to keep Unit 02 off the combat roster until Akagi can sort out the glitch. If it's any consolation, the committee's questions the other day seemed flustered. They didn't seem to know what to do with the news of Unit 02's incident."

"Of course not. It wasn't scheduled."

Fuyutski chuckled. "We tried to tell them. Events not foreseen in the Dead Sea Scrolls were bound to come to pass. Perhaps this will shake them out of their complacency."

"Perhaps." Ikari kept his eyes on the moving vista beyond the window. "Akagi is running a synchronicity test today."

"Yes," Fuyutski answered, though he knew it wasn't a question.

"I'd like you to check her results."

"Of course. Any particular reason why?"

"Simple best practice. She's run too long without peer review."

"You don't want her to burn out."

"More or less."

Fuyutski wanted to ask if she was still sharing Ikari's bed, though he knew better than to bring that up openly. Still, the desire to poke the beast was an old one, and once it reared its head, he found he had to fulfill it.

"What about the Third Child?" he said, instead.

"You'll have to be more specific."

"He's back with Katsuragi." Fuyutski watched his old colleague. "I had his security stand down and he took the initiative. Between that and the Second Child's behavior during the last battle, I should think that whatever effects Katsuragi's meddling may have had, the result has been a net positive."

"Is that a question, Professor?"

"Merely an observation, Commander."

Ikari's mannerisms did not change. "It is appreciated," he said.

They sat in silence for the remainder of the ride.

((()))

The plug's thrum was off. Asuka noticed it immediately—a higher-pitched drone than she was used to, the change almost imperceptible on the edge of her hearing, but there nonetheless. It was only when she closed her eyes and began to concentrate that she realized the noise wasn't the only difference. She tried to let her mind drift, to sink into the synchronicity, but no matter how she tried, her mind could not dip as far as she wanted. It was a sensation somewhere between falling asleep and stepping into a swimming pool only to find it was not as deep as anticipated. It was as if something were blocking her.

She realized what it was. The test plug wasn't connected to Unit 02. Normally, the conjunctive cables ran through a pattern buffer before relaying signals to the Unit's dormant core system. It was a safety measure, first and foremost, but it allowed for useful data with minimal interference.

What she was feeling now was just the pattern buffer with nothing beyond it. If she blanked enough, she could feel her thoughts flowing back to her—a ghostly feedback bouncing off the buffer.

Her hands tightened on her control yokes. Her jaw clenched. Akagi could talk all she wanted about how it wasn't her, it was the Unit, but that was bull. They didn't trust her. After everything she had done for them, after all the pain and work, they couldn't even trust her to do remotely synch with it. What was the point of this test? To see if she could think properly, like some useless trainee? This is the kind of crap they had her do when she was a kid!

It was all just so pathetically stupid.

Her communications link opened. Lieutenant Ibuki's voice reached her. "Asuka, you destabilized. Is everything alright?"

"Just fine." She released her yokes and took a breath.

"Try to relax. It's just a test."

"I am relaxed!" she said. "I can't concentrate with you talking to me! Now butt out and let me work!"

Ibuki butted out without comment.

((()))

The control booth was unusually quiet. The technicians spoke back and forth as they adjusted the feed from the test plugs to the monitors, coalesced data, and ensured direct feed to the Magi, but otherwise it was an uneventful test. Misato watched the pilots, each on their individual screen, their eyes closed in concentration. She hovered over Lieutenant Ibuki's console for a moment, checking the data.

Synchronization data, like most of the data related to the Evangelions, mostly resembled a scrambled mess of graphs to Misato. There was one figure called a Destrudo manifestation approximate which was always rendered in three figures with a dash between each, as in 239- **242** -245, with the center figure always bolded. She had no idea what it meant, but it popped up on every data printout and would be mentioned at most meetings. Misato always nodded, feigning understanding, and moved to the synchronization ratio, which was a percentage and something that she could actually understand.

That's what most of adult life seemed to be—a lot of knowing when to nod and when not to nod, and how to move conversations to things you actually understood.

"What do you think, ma'am?" Ibuki said, noticing her.

"Shinji's ratio seems higher," she said.

"Yes, ma'am. His median D.M. is commensurate, too."

"Yep."

Misato heard a snort from behind her. She turned and saw Dr. Akagi shaking her head as she worked at her datapad. Akagi had seen right through her. It should have made her angry, but she found herself smiling.

She walked across the control box and stood by her old roommate. "Something funny, Doctor?"

"'Yep,'" Akagi replied.

Misato grinned despite herself. "Look, I don't do the technical stuff. Operations management is about high level strategy."

"Yep."

"Shut up," Misato said, but laughed herself. Ritsuko grinned and sighed, which was as close to a laugh as she would let herself have. They both drew looks from the nearby techs, who had, in a low, intuitive way, realized the two department heads had been on thin ice for a few weeks. It had made for an awkward working environment.

"You know, we used to be friends," Misato said.

"Pretty good ones, too," Ritsuko said.

"Some would say best friends."

"Some might, yes."

Misato dropped her voice. "That thing with the Second Branch got me thinking about things."

"That's not a good sign."

"Oh, don't be you for a moment," Misato said. "All those people worked for months on the recovered S2 organ, tried to synthesize it, get it installed in Unit 04. That's a lot of work, and it all ended in a split second."

"Yes," Ritsuko said. No bitchy side comment to go along with it, no questioning of her intelligence. In Misato's experience, tragedy had a way of making people feel lonely. Maybe Ritsuko was feeling it, too.

Misato decided to trust herself. "I just think about what we're doing here. I've known you my whole adult life, Rits. I work with you every day, and it could all end in a heartbeat. I don't want us to be like this." She pointed back and forth between them. "Whatever this is, it's stupid."

There it was, then. An olive branch. It took a lot for her to put it out there, to make the leap of faith and place the future of their friendship in something that was more than an admission but not quite an apology. If Ritsuko wanted, she could shut it down right here, permanently.

The doctor lowered her datapad into her pocket. "Look, Misato, I had professional problems with things you've done recently."

"You've said as much."

"I _had_ problems. I don't have them anymore." Ritsuko looked around the control box, as if checking for something. She frowned. "I shouldn't tell you this," she said, "but some of what you hypothesized, about Shinji and Asuka, might have been correct."

"What do you mean?"

"I swear, if you tell anyone I told you this—"

"Never," she said.

Ritsuko held her gaze for a moment. Then she spoke without reservation or hesitation. "Unit 02 pulled Unit 01 free of the Angel. The working hypothesis is that the pilot's emotional fixation may have instigated the berserk event."

"You're joking."

"I have it on video."

"The Commander saw this?"

Ritsuko looked at her. "What do you think?"

"I think I really want to rub this in your face right now."

"Please don't be like that."

"I can give you one I-told-you-so right now, or I can give a hundred of them behind your back to Kaji."

Ritsuko's mouth twitched in the beginnings of a smile. "Okay, but just once."

"I fucking _told you so_!" she said, perhaps a little too loud. The heads swiveled again, this time faster and with more regularity. Misato looked at them. "Back to work!"

The heads went back to work.

Ritsuko smiled—an actual smile, this time. "Feel better?"

"Extremely," Misato said. "For the record, I'm also sorry. No matter what happened, I shouldn't have treated you like I did these past weeks. That's on me."

"Yes, it is," Ritsuko said. "But I'm sorry, too. Especially about yesterday. That thing with Asuka did not go well."

"Hey, it's okay. We'll get her past it." Misato nodded, as if something official had taken place. "I'm glad we're friends again."

"Whatever works." Ritsuko shook her head as she fished her datapad back out.

"What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?" Misato said.

"I'm actually busy."

"A big date?"

"Not quite," Ritsuko said. "I have to go fetch our new pilot."

((()))

After the test, Asuka found herself in the locker room with Ayanami. It was easy to avoid the First Child. Despite the locker room being designated for pilots only, it was still sized for what seemed like a full baseball team's worth of occupants. This was a common enough feature of the facility, Asuka had realized. There were dozens of Evangelion cages that went unused. Whole wings of the facility given over to dormitories, break rooms, gymnasiums, and kitchens. It was clear that someone involved in the planning had anticipated that more than three Evangelions would be sent to the site.

As she showered, Asuka tried to imagine what it would be like as one of a squadron instead of one of a trio. Maybe she would have greater success socializing if she had a bigger pool to choose from.

When she was finished, she stepped out, dried off, and started dressing. Rei sat at the other end of the bench from her, back to her. Asuka glanced at her as she dressed and felt again the nagging memory of their last conversation. Wondergirl had gone out of her way to see her in the hospital, and all she had done was fire back some childish insult.

She had played like Ayanami's actions did not matter. She had made it clear that they were not friends, nor would they ever be. It was a sentiment that had once been true. Though most of her still felt the same, perhaps, Asuka thought, it was less true now. They did not have to be friends, necessarily, but it would be nice if they at least got along.

Asuka slid her right foot into her shoe. She thought about the moment, a few weeks back, when she had punched Ayanami in the face. The memory made her cringe. She went to shrug the feeling away, bury it, but instead she decided to sit in the feeling a moment. She forced herself to feel the shame. Her thoughts did not want to cooperate.

_Hitting her doesn't matter. She's just an emotionless doll._

No, Asuka thought. She isn't emotionless. She likes that stooge, just like you like Shinji. She's not an emotionless doll.

 _You don't owe her anything_.

Maybe not, but it won't hurt to do something. Asuka laced her shoe. An apology could get her, while maybe not friendship, at least a way out of this irritating guilt.

Ayanami stood up to leave. She grabbed her school bag and closed her locker.

Asuka shot up, too. "Hey, Wondergirl," she said.

Ayanami turned to look at her. She said nothing.

"I just wanted to say thanks," Asuka said.

"What for?"

"For coming to see me the other day. I wasn't really in a great mood, and coming by at another time would have been better for me, but I still should've treated you better. For that. For coming to see me."

Ayanami looked at her, face unchanging.

"I also wanted to say that I apologize for hitting you. It was a bad day for me and I took it out on you. I shouldn't have done that." Asuka took a breath. "So there you go. Maybe we can be better friends moving forward."

Ayanami narrowed her eyes. "I wonder," she said, "do you only give apologies when you want something out of someone else?"

"What the hell does that mean?" Asuka said, stammering to find more words to counter her co-pilot. "You don't know what I mean or what I want! How could you? You're an emotionless, wind-up puppet!"

Ayanami turned and walked away. "Goodbye," she said, though it couldn't be heard over Asuka's spluttering.

"Get back here!" she shouted, but Ayanami was already gone. Asuka moved to follow her and realized she was still holding her left shoe in her hand. She hurriedly sat down and pulled it on, lacing it while she muttered to herself. "That arrogant, stuck-up, idiot toy soldier. Thinks she knows everything."

She stood up, still muttering, and grabbed her duffel bag in one hand. She left the locker room at a jog, hurrying to catch up with Ayanami. If that little wind-up brat thought she was going to have the last word, she had another thing coming.

She rounded a corner leading to the elevators and stopped.

Ayanami was at the elevator bank with Shinji. His back was to her, so he had not seen her yet.

Asuka dipped back out of sight. She did it without conscious thought; the sight of Shinji made her jump back out of instinct. She hated herself for it. The boy had said he loved her just four days ago, and now she was here, hugging the wall, too afraid to go talk to him.

She put her back to the wall and listened around the corner. She heard them talking. Ayanami's voice was a quiet murmur from which she could discern nothing, while Shinji's voice was tantalizingly close to making audible words. The tone was cordial, but there was nothing definite.

After a minute, the elevator dinged, and she heard the sound of the doors parting. Footsteps. The doors sliding closed again.

Asuka leaned out from around the corner. The hallway was empty. She held slid her duffel bag onto her shoulder and let out a sigh.

"Spying, are we?" said a voice, right in her ear.

She jumped, screaming, and turned around to find a familiar face smirking down at her.

"Kaji!" she said. "Don't sneak up on girls like that."

"I wasn't even sneaking," he said. "I was walking normally. You'd have heard me if you weren't so preoccupied."

"Shut up," she said, though she could not find the enthusiasm to make it convincing.

Kaji looked at her for a moment, as if he were making up his mind about something. "Tell you what," he said. "Take a ride with me. I've got something to show you."

((()))

The elevator marked each floor as they ascended, drawing a quiet tick-tick-tick that cut through the silence. Shinji stood leaning his shoulder against the wall. Ayanami was by the doors. They had fallen into silence after the basic round of questions had come to an end. _Hey, Rei, how are you? Fine. How was your test? Fine._

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Shinji took a breath and decided to break the silence.

"So, you ready for school tomorrow?"

"I am not going."

"Oh. What are you doing instead?"

"I have tests all day with Dr. Akagi. I will be back at school on Thursday."

"Okay. Are you sick or something?"

"No."

The silence returned. The elevator stopped and they got out, walking together to the train terminal. They boarded together. Commuters streamed in and out of the open car, jostling their briefcases and backpacks, talking on cell phones and to one another—the work crowd heading home for the night. The train would take them to Ayanami's district first, then further out to his.

Ayanami found a seat. She didn't seem to care if he sat with her or not. For Shinji, being friends with Ayanami often resulted in confusion. She did not seem to care if he was present or not, and she never offered any information beyond what was strictly required by a question. Conversations were hard.

Which made it even harder for him to understand how in the world she had ended up with Kensuke.

He decided to sit down next to her. She looked at him briefly, but did not seem to care.

He cleared his throat. "Does Kensuke know you'll be gone tomorrow?" he said.

"No," she said.

Shinji looked away, trying to figure out how to keep this up. He had not talked with Ayanami one-on-one in what felt like weeks. He knew things between her and Asuka had become pretty terrible, but he had hoped that whatever friendship they had—if it could even be called friendship—wouldn't be affected. Perhaps he had been wrong.

"Should I have told him?" she said, suddenly.

Shinji looked at her, surprised she had spoken. "Probably, yeah."

"Why?"

"Well, if Asuka wasn't going to be at school, I would want to know."

"Pilot Soryu doesn't go to school anymore."

"Well, yeah. But if she did, is what I mean."

"Why would you want to know?"

"I don't know. Because I want to see her, and make sure she's okay. All that stuff."

Ayanami shifted in her seat, and an expression approaching worry graced her features, if only for a moment.

"Uh," Shinji started. "I could talk to him, if you want."

"About what?"

"About this. I can explain why you're gone."

"Thank you."

"No problem," Shinji said. "We pilots have to stick out for each other, right?"

Ayanami looked at him in that way she had that invariably made the last thing he said sound stupid and hollow. Silence returned. Shinji tapped out a rythym on his legs and looked around, regretting his last comment and wondering if he could come up with an excuse to walk away.

"Do you feel like you have a bond with me?" Ayanami said.

Shinji looked back at her. Her red eyes bored into him.

"I think so," he said.

"Why?"

"Well, we're both Evangelion pilots. There are only three of us who do this job. No one else gets it." Shinji shrugged. "That's got to be some kind of bond."

"Where we stick out for each other," she said, so seriously that it made him laugh.

"Yeah," he said. "Sorry. Yes."

"What does that mean?"

"It means…" He trailed off, trying to put it into words. "Like, we have to care for each other and work together well."

"Do you believe that?" she said.

He had not believed it when he said it. He had been making a joke, trying to fill dead air and kill the awkwardness he felt. But now, as she asked him, he considered it. The train around them was full, yet he felt no connection to any one of the civilians standing around them. He had the same sensation that he did when he considered the size of the planet, or the length of history, or any other of a dozen such thoughts which reach a person in the middle of the night and make him feel small, insignificant, and fleeting.

And in all that, he realized he felt towards no one the way he did towards his fellow Children.

"Yeah," he said, "I do."

The train came to a stop at her station. Passengers began exiting the train. Ayanami stood up, grabbing her bag.

"I will see you on Thursday, Pilot Ikari," she said.

"You can call me Shinji," he said. "I think we've known each other long enough."

"Very well, Shinji."

She left, and the doors closed behind her. Shinji looked out the window as the train pulled away, watching her walk down the stairs and out of sight, her blue hair a beacon in the crowd.

((()))

"What are these?" Asuka said. She crouched in the dirt, looking at the rounded gourd in front of her. She ran her fingers over it, feeling the slick drops of moisture on its green skin. When she pressed it between her palms and lifted, she realized it was heavier than she thought. "Some kind of pumpkin?"

Kaji laughed. "You don't know what a watermelon is?"

"Don't make fun of me! I'm not used to Japanese vegetables."

"Watermelons aren't a Japanese anything. They're found everywhere. And they're not a vegetable. They're a fruit."

"'They're not a vegetable, they're a fruit,'" Asuka said, under her breath. "You grow these?"

"I do."

"Don't they sell these things at a store?"

"They do."

"Then what are we doing out here?"

Kaji had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He bent over by an outdoor faucet, filling a watering can with water. "Learning, among other things."

"Learning what?" she asked, standing up.

"Whatever we can," Kaji said. He was next to her, the watering can held out to her, handle-first. He shook it slightly.

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "You want me to work for you?"

"Yes," he said. "Unless the task is too difficult for the great Second Child to accomplish. I could always find someone else to—"

The water can was yanked from his hand.

"How do I do this?" she said, turning it around in her grasp.

He showed her, and she began. She started out aggressively, making sure to hit the same melon thoroughly, until he stopped her.

"Don't drown them," he said, smiling. "It's called sprinkling for a reason. Just use a little. Keep it moving, and don't step on the vines."

She adjusted. The torrent became a trickle. She moved up and down the lines of watermelons, turning from side to side. Eventually she decided to do one line at a time, then go back down the same path to do the opposite line. She concentrated on it, holding the can's handle in a deathgrip, her eyes never leaving the melons. By the time her water can was empty, she felt like she was good at it.

Kaji was trimming a vine when she got to him. "I'm done," she said, holding the water can upside down in evidence.

He didn't look up. "Fill it up and do the rest."

"Come on," she said, stamping her foot.

"If you think you can't handle it—"

The faucet came on, the can filled, and she went back at it.

Another line, a second, and a third. She loosened her grip on the handle, moved it from hand-to-hand as she went. She kept focused, but let her eyes drift. Despite all the time she had spent in Tokyo-3, she realized she had never stood outside HQ in the GeoFront. She had known that there was an entire ecology in the cavern, and had seen it from train windows and screens enough times, but this was her first time ever standing in the middle of it. She could see the pyramidal headquarters building to her left, rising above the treetops. Overhead were the retracted defense buildings hanging like stalactites from the cavern ceiling, and all around were the glittering trails of train cars circumnavigating the chamber's massive walls, so distant as to be hazy in the amber light.

The light in the GeoFront lessened slightly as evening settled in. When the can was empty again, she refilled it without complaint and returned to her work. She let her mind drift as she watered, thinking through days gone by and days to come. Mostly she thought of Shinji, and for the first time in days, she wasn't afraid to think about him. She thought about him wearing his apron, standing in the kitchen. She thought of him at school, looking away quickly when she caught him staring. Mostly she thought of his smile, about how rare it was and how much she loved pulling it out of him.

She thought about him trying, unsuccessfully, to talk to her for the past four days. She wanted to fix that, but couldn't think of a way to do it, and soon she didn't need a water can to sprinkle the garden.

Kaji walked over to her, taking off his gardening gloves. "It'll be dark here in a few. Think we'd better get going."

"Yeah, okay," she said, wiping her eyes.

"Oh." Kaji leaned down, putting a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, kid. What's going on?"

She pulled away. "I'm fine."

"You're really not."

"I'm fine!" she repeated. The water can hit the dirt with a hollow thud and she put both hands to her face. "I'm fine! Just leave me alone!"

"Okay, okay. You're fine." Kaji moved closer, but did not try to touch her. "I'm not saying there's anything wrong with you."

"I'm a freak!"

"You're not a freak."

"I am! I'm a freak!"

"You're a good kid, Asuka."

_Her dad dropped her off at the front desk and told her to go on ahead. He had to sign in, and she knew the way. She ran all the way there. Her head was filled with all the things she wanted to tell her—that she'd passed the test, that she'd been chosen, that she would be the Second Child, an elite pilot, the best in the whole world._

"I'm the reason she's dead!" she said. The words flowed easier when she couldn't see Kaji, as if she was wailing to a voice that didn't count. "She's gone and I'm still here!"

"What?"

_The door stayed open for a long time. No one came to find her. When she focused on it, she could see the room as it had been—the cold winter light from outside, the overhead fluorescents shut off from lack of movement in the room. The bed was turned down precisely, as if she had done it deliberately, calmly, before setting up the rope. Where did she get the rope?_

"And if he ever finds out that I did that, he'll never love me again!"

"What are you talking about? You didn't do anything."

_Her feet were blue. The bones in her ankles seemed like they were trying to push through her skin. Why didn't they let her have slippers? Did she live like that all the time, walking around with bare feet on those white floors? They let her have the doll but not any shoes. The doll was there, too, hanging in a noose meant for her. She hanged the wrong daughter._

"She's dead because of me."

"Asuka—"

_Her dad found her. He grabbed her and pulled her back from the doorway. "Goddamnit!" he shouted, "Somebody help!" They came running, shoes clicking on cold tile. They ran into the room. One of them closed the door, but not before she saw an orderly grab the body around the waist and lift, to make slack._

Every visit, she watched her talk to that doll, hug it, dress it in small clothes and feed it from dry bottles. She never went in. She wanted to pound the glass, scream at her 'I'm right here!'. She never did, and her mother died never knowing that her real daughter was right there, just beyond the glass. If she had, maybe she would have gotten better.

"I never did anything to help!"

"Asuka, you were a child."

"Like that matters!" She fell into the dirt, landing on her knees, hands pressed to her eyes, fingertips in the roots of her bangs.

She cried into her hands, but made as little sound as she could. Her shoulders wracked with each sob, but she bit down on her lower lip, keeping the sound clenched in, fighting it back. She breathed deep, exhaling slowly. She repeated the process until she was able to push it under control. She got to her feet, then wiped her face and then wiped her hands on her jeans, destroying any evidence that she had ever broken, even momentarily.

When she opened her eyes, the world seemed brighter than before; a symptom of her momentarily blinded eyes catching up.

"Sorry about that," she said, looking up at him.

Kaji shook his head. "There's nothing to be sorry about," he said.

"I didn't know you knew about all that."

"I should have told you."

"I guess it makes sense that you do. Doesn't matter." She knelt down and picked up her water can. "Where does this go?"

"We can talk about this if you want to."

"There's nothing to talk about."

Kaji looked at her, tight-lipped. "Asuka…" he began.

"What?" she said. Her eyes were red, but her face was dry. "There's nothing to say. It's done. Now where does this go?"

The two looked at one another for a long moment. A hundred feet away, back by the trail through this section of gardens, lampposts ignited their bulbs and began to warm the path with artificial light.

"I'll take care of it," he said, grabbing the can. "I'll meet you at the car."

"'Kay," she said, and walked away.

((()))

Streetlights flashed across the blue hood of the Alpine A310 as it cruised, its custom electric motivators carrying it silently forward, leaving nothing but the hum of the tires to grace the ear. She had purchased the car just after college—a gift to herself for graduating, and a way to commemorate her at-the-time fresh job with Nerv. The conversions from petrol to electric and a left-to-right steering column hadn't come cheap, but they were worth it. The car handled like a dream.

Other little touches had been added over time so that her dashboard and center console now bloomed with a GPS screen, a satellite uplink phone, and a laptop mounted on a gimbal. The first time Ritsuko had ridden in it, she had asked if it was a car or a tank.

Misato let the wheel spin in her grip, driving on reflex. She was glad she had patched things up with her old friend. Things had become too tense for too long. It was excusable to a point—they were in a war, after all—but it had still sat poorly with her. Hopefully, things would be different now.

And then there was the matter of the new pilot.

Her satellite phone rang, and she picked it up without thinking. "Katsuragi. Go ahead."

"It's me," said Kaji. "I just dropped Asuka off at your place."

"I'm on my way home now. I figured you'd have had her home an hour ago."

"We took a detour."

"Let me guess," she said. "Ice cream?"

"Gardening, actually."

"Come again?"

"I have a garden," Kaji said.

"You're full of surprises."

"Yeah."

He was quieter than usual. She expected him to bounce back at her joke, but more than anything he just sounded tired.

"What's up?" she said.

"Has Asuka ever talked with you about her mother?"

Misato placed the phone in the crook of her shoulder as she took another turn, bringing her off the highway and into her apartment's residential district. "When she was much younger, yes. But not in any detail. She doesn't like to talk about it."

"That's not surprising." Kaji took a breath. "She mentioned it to me tonight. It didn't go well."

"Can you give me details?"

Kaji was quiet. Misato pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at the dial screen on its back, checking the connection. It was still green.

"You there?" she said.

"Yes," he said. "Just keep an eye on her. She's pretty volatile right now."

Misato wanted more information, but realized he wouldn't be forthcoming. "I'll do that," she said, instead.

"Good night, Misato."

The line disconnected. She hung up the phone.

A few minutes later, she pulled into a parking spot in the empty lot in front of her building. She turned the car off and sat for a moment, wondering how she had repaired one relationship only to see two more wilt in a single day. Kaji was unforthcoming, and Asuka was more closed-off than ever. Shinji was back, but he seemed isolated still, locked in his own world more than not.

The dual role of commanding officer and parental figure had always been a problem, but now it was more difficult than ever. In this moment, the parental side of her won out. Until she could get everything under control, she wouldn't introduce any new stress into the kids' lives.

She looked at herself in the rearview mirror, and decided not to tell either of them about Toji Suzuhara.


	19. Chapter 19

The sun never really rose over Japan. The sun was a fixed point in the solar system. The planet rotated and Japan rotated with it. When the sun appeared beyond the window, Rei Ayanami woke up.

She pushed her bedsheet aside and stood up. She showered, brushed her teeth, brushed her hair, and went to her closet. The planet was further along. More sunlight washed her room. The shadows lessened. She dressed. She thought about the day as she anticipated it. Tests with Dr. Akagi all day, then lunch with the commander.

She had seen him after every session in the tank for her entire life. It was a habit at this point—she got a day off school, a day off of work with the Eva, and afterwards they always ate lunch together. When she was younger, eating with the Commander was a common practice; they spent more time together back then, in the beginning. For the past few years, she always looked forward to these days. Their lunches were a renewal of an earlier time in their relationship.

But today, as she anticipated lunch, the sensation in her chest was something different—a taut nervousness in place of excitement that she had never felt before—yet she could not understand what had prompted the emotion.

She buttoned her blouse and fastened her skirt. She took her briefcase, her ID card, and slid her feet into her shoes. She wondered about what the classroom at school would be like today, her seat empty. She pictured Kensuke looking at that empty seat.

Then she headed out the door.

((()))

Tonkatsu, rice, bell peppers, and a hardboiled egg, all in a bento. Shinji flicked the latched closed and sat it next to his bag. Then he did the same to the second bento, packing, latching, and sliding it to the side. He cleaned up the kitchen quickly and methodically, rinsing dishes and sifting them into their proper slots in the dishwasher. It was early yet, and no one else was up.

Once, this had been a morning routine punctuated by Asuka's voice. Early on, she had teased and berated him. Then she grew to begrudgingly thank him, and eventually to help him as best she could. Now there was just silence.

He slid the dishwasher shut and grabbed his lunch. He looked at the second bento, sitting on the counter. Then he left for the day.

((()))

The tank had a hum like waves hitting a beach, lulling her to sleep. The sensation of sitting within it was similar to being in the entry plug in many ways, but she always felt more at home here. She closed her eyes, stilled her lungs, and let the tank do the breathing for her. It was in that sleep that the dreams found her.

Day to day, Rei Ayanami didn't dream. She knew that dreams existed for other people, but she had trouble imagining what they were. In her reading, she had come across the notion of the soul. In science, the soul was a solid construct that could be quantified, measured, and studied. But that was a relatively recent discovery. As a poetic concept, the soul was much older. In poetry, it seemed that the soul was an ephemeral construct at the core of the human experience—the answer to who a person was.

Science had found the soul, but didn't know what to do with it. Poetry described the soul, but could not find it. In the end, neither held sufficient answers for her. She had come to believe that the first step to ownership of a thing was the capacity to fathom it. If that was true, then her inability to fathom her soul, her dreams, was proof of their absence. She was unique; a soulless person.

Perhaps this tank was what completed her. Maybe here is where she found her soul, as part of something greater. She always felt incomplete for a few hours after leaving the tank, after all. Here she could sleep and feel dreams as only she knew them, the fingers of other hers reaching through her scalp, teasing at the strands of her memories, pulling them into the cold dark that surrounded the tank. Time washed away, and she was at peace.

"Rei."

She opened her eyes. Time had passed, though she was unsure how long. Beyond the glass, Dr. Akagi and the Commander stood, watching her.

"That's it for today," the Commander said. "Let's eat."

((()))

The cryogenic cabling snaking into Unit 02's crimson plating gave the cage an undeniable chill. Smoke like dry ice fumed from the connection vents, spilling across the broad red shoulders and across the oil slick. Fingers of the smoke lapped at the umbilical bridge, and Asuka pulled her jacket closer as she sat there, cross-legged. Under her jacket she wore her plugsuit. There was no chance that she would be called on to climb inside the frozen Evangelion, but while she was here at work, she would be in uniform.

Her bento sat in front of her, open for business. She stabbed at the bell peppers with her chopsticks, moving them around without really eating them.

She and Shinji still hadn't spoken, and he had given no further attempts to bridge the gap. No more knocks at her bedroom door. Her fault, probably. Still, he had he kept packing her lunches. Not only that, but he packed something she loved. Tonkatsu was the closest Japanese thing she'd had to an honest article of meat, and the bell peppers tasted great.

Which made it all the harder to eat. She pushed the peppers into the rice and rolled the egg around with the tips of her sticks. Her stepmother used to make fried chicken. Asuka let on that she liked it, once, when she was eight or so. From then on it was fried chicken as often as could be—once a week, usually. When Asuka realized it was on purpose, as an olive branch between them, she refused to eat it.

At first. It turned out that even she couldn't ignore the cravings of a growing stomach.

In the end, it became of the few things they had bonded over.

She pinched a pepper and a bit of rice between her sticks and popped it into her mouth. As she chewed, she had a brief want to call her stepmother. She hadn't talked to the woman in months—hadn't talked to her father for just as long, come to think of it. A part of her wondered if they were worried about her. They weren't bad people. They had tried to give her birthday parties and playdates and friends, all the things that normal children had.

She stabbed a chunk of the tokatsu. If she was being fair, she had to admit they did the best that they could. They couldn't be blamed for her growing up faster than other kids, for not needing playdates, friends, or some stupid stuffed toy.

That thought killed any urge to call her family, or call anyone for that matter. She'd made a promise a long time ago to never cry again and to never need anyone.

But she cried yesterday, in a watermelon patch. And hadn't she already told Shinji she loved him? If that wasn't needing someone, then what was?

Were childhood promises meant to be broken? Was she not as grown-up as she thought?

She took a sip of her canned coffee and looked up at Unit 02. It stared down at her, its four eyes dim but for the reflection of the fluorescents high overhead.

"What the hell are you looking at, anyway?" she said.

((()))

They ate in the Commander's office. They sat at his desk, he in his seat, a bowl of unagi don in front of him; her in a chair pulled up to the short edge, a plate of grilled tofu before her. The Commander ate slowly, keeping an eye on a stream of reports as they scrolled across his datapad. Rei pushed her food around on her plate. She ate sparingly, between glances cast at the man on her right.

The solace of the tank had left her as soon as she had dried and dressed herself, her thoughts returning to the strange tumult she had found herself in since the morning. She thought again of Kensuke and Shinji. But moreover, she thought of what her superior would think of her absentmindedness, and the relationships that were causing it.

Never in their shared history had she hidden anything from the Commander. She knew him better than she knew any other person, and she had always trusted him implicitly. While she did not think of him as her father—she had no parents, and did not seek anyone to fill that void—she could acknowledge that the Commander had filled the role of a father from time to time, as best as his position allowed him to.

She could not frame her worry in words, but some low, intuitive part of her assumed that the Commander would not approve of her newfound friendships. That part of her compared the act of friendship to disobeying an order, and it made her queasy.

The question came from nowhere. "Is something wrong with the food?"

Rei blinked. "No, sir."

"You've barely touched it."

She looked down at her tofu and quickly speared some of it into her mouth.

The Commander did not look at her. He turned his chopsticks in his bowl, looping rice and eel as he spoke. "How is school?"

"I am passing all subjects."

"That is good. How are your friends?"

He had never asked that before. She had lived around him for her entire life, but she could not recall a time where he asked her about her relationship to others. Rei glanced at him. Still no change in his posture or demeanor.

"They are well," she said.

"I see." The Commander took a bite, placed his chopsticks in the bowl, and chewed. When he finished, he carefully wiped his mouth with a napkin. Then he looked at her. "You have been nervous since I first saw you today."

Rei was silent.

"Please tell me why," he said.

Rei held his gaze as best she could. "I did not get enough sleep last night," she said, slowly.

The Commander nodded and went back to his food. Rei did the same, methodically picking and chewing.

"That's the first time you've ever lied to me," he said, after a moment.

Rei froze. She immediately regretted the lie and everything that had led to it. She had never in her life disobeyed an order or told anything but the blunt truth. Just doing so had already flushed her skin with blood and set her heart pumping. Now, having been caught, she felt ice cold, embarrassed, and ashamed.

"I am sorry, sir," she said.

The Commander looked at her and did the last thing she expected: he smiled. "It's alright, Rei," he said.

Rei was silent again.

"I understand why you felt you had to," he said. "Just know that I am not angry at you for having friends. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well."

Silence returned, but it settled poorly in Rei's mind. She tried to keep eating, but found it difficult. She fixated on the sudden stress of the past two minutes.

Then the Commander looked at her again, one eyebrow raised, almost comically. He made a show of looking at her plate. A twitch of a smile tugged at Rei's mouth as she realized what was about to happen. Then, with speed, the Commander reached out with his chopsticks and snatched a square of tofu and popped it into his mouth.

Rei smiled, fully.

The Commander returned to his meal and his datapad. "You'll always have my trust, Rei," he said, offhandedly, and with those words banished any doubt in her mind as to her duty. While she might have had new relationships in her life, but they were approved. Any friendship she had was compatible with her orders.

The tumult in her stomach subsided. Her priorities were clear again. She would neverdisobey an order, and she would never lie again.

"Thank you, sir," she said.

They ate the rest of their meal in comfortable silence.

((()))

Shinji was about to open his lunch at his desk when Class 2-B's teacher handed him a note without looking at him.

_Ikari, Shinji. Transfer notice. Report to Class 2-A, homeroom._

"Oh," he said. "Should I go now?"

"Probably," said the teacher.

Shinji stood up, grabbed his lunch, and packed his laptop, books, and materials into his backpack. He wondered why he had been transferred back, and on whose authority. Surely he had been sent to 2-B at the behest of Nerv. Were they the ones sending him back? Misato could have made it happen, he reasoned, but if so, why wouldn't she tell him? Maybe it was his father, meddling again, or offering another wordless apology by way of action.

Maybe it was just the school realizing that Nerv had no authority over them. Could that be the case? How did that work, anyway?

Also, did it really matter? He had no say in where he went to school, or his schedule while he was there. The only choice he had was whether or not to be a pilot. From that one decision, everything else was decided for him. So long as he was here in Tokyo-3, he lived by others' rules.

That wasn't much of a change, really. He had always done what others wanted, suggested, or commanded him to do. He played the cello because he had been told to. He piloted the Eva because he'd been told to.

He imagined Asuka would find that sickening.

As he slung his pack over his shoulder, he took a look around the classroom, wondering if he should say goodbye to anyone. What he saw was only a gallery of faces, unlabeled in his mind. He knew none of them, so he left without comment.

When he got to 2-A, Hikari greeted him at the door. "Ikari, how have you been?"

"Well," he began, and then stopped as he realized that he didn't know how to explain being absorbed into a self-contained separate dimension, or the fact that he only lived in the real world again because his girlfriend's giant robot had come to life and torn a hole in that separate dimension, unintentionally causing a rainstorm of blood to wash most of downtown.

"I've been good," he said, instead.

Hikari's expression was unreadable. "How's Asuka?"

"Good," he said. "She's good."

Hikari let him go. He found his desk—unused in his absence, apparently—and set his things down. He had just begun opening his bento when he felt a thump on his back.

"Look who's back," said a voice to accompany the thump.

"Hey, Kensuke," Shinji said, turning to look at his friend.

"This doesn't mean the Red Devil is coming back, too, does it?"

"It doesn't seem that way."

"Awesome." Kensuke took a seat on the empty desk behind him. His friend's face suddenly changed. "I, uh, don't mean anything by that."

"I know," Shinji said.

"Cool," Kensuke said. It wasn't very convincing, so he repeated it. "Cool."

Shinji began to unpack his bento for the second time. "I talked to Rei last night after our tests. She's spending the day at Nerv."

"Oh. She didn't tell me."

Shinji wanted to tell him the whole story, about Rei forgetting to tell him, but he did not know how to say it without it becoming awkward. It was still difficult to picture Rei and Kensuke as anything but distant classmates; imagining them doing anything close to what he and Asuka had done—even just holding hands, for that matter—was almost impossible.

He decided he needed more details.

"So," he began, "you and Rei seem to get along really well."

"We do?" Kensuke said.

"I guess. I haven't really seen you two together except before school. Do you eat together most days?"

"Yeah."

"What, uh… What else do you do?"

Kensuke looked at him, his eyes narrowing behind his thick lenses. "What are you asking?"

"Nothing like that!" Shinji raised his hands. "Just, like, what do you do together? Do you only see her at school?"

Kensuke relaxed. "We go to the park sometimes. Sometimes we just walk around. We talk."

Shinji tried to imagine Rei talking voluntarily. He had seen her smile exactly twice in the time he had known her, so a park-walking talkative Rei seemed fantastical.

Kensuke looked around the room, then leaned in close. "Plus," he whispered, "we made out."

"What?" Shinji said, a little too loud. He spun in time to see Hikari glare at them both. He mouthed a quick 'sorry!' and turned back to Kensuke. "You what?" he said, quieter.

"We made out in the park." Kensuke's smile somehow managed to be enthusiastic and smug simultaneously.

"What do you mean?"

"We kissed!"

The image of Rei Ayanami kissing Kensuke Aida tried to form in Shinji's mind, but would not crystalize in anything but a cartoonish simulacrum of his two friends. Whatever his brain was made of, it didn't have the computing power necessary to render the image with any realism. The effort must have shown on his face, too, because Kensuke started laughing.

"How you like that? First of the Three Stooges to kiss a girl."

Shinji raised a finger, his smile returning. "Hold on."

Kensuke's smug enthusiasm dampened. "No."

"Listen—"

"No!"

"—I'm not saying it's happened a lot, but—"

"No! No!"

"—it has definitely happened."

"When?"

Shinji made a show of counting on his fingers. "Like two months ago."

Kensuke slumped down in his seat. He pressed a palm to his head and closed his eyes. "I don't want to think about that. You and Asuka."

"Yeah."

There was a moment of silence. Kensuke broke it when he suddenly leaned forward again. "It's pretty awesome though, right?"

"It's the greatest," Shinji said.

They talked for the rest of lunch. As much as each of them wanted to focus on each other's respective girlfriend, they kept the conflicting personalities out of it. Instead, each boy simply enjoyed talking with a friend about the fascinating discovery of the opposite sex and just how great it could be, to the point that neither of them realized their third friend wasn't in class for lunch.


	20. Chapter 20

Shinji entered the kitchen on Thursday morning, expecting an empty room, and was surprised to see his commanding officer was already up. Not only that, but she was already in uniform, leaning on the kitchen table, sipping her coffee. She was looking away from him, toward the front door.

"Good morning," he said.

Misato turned to look at him, as if he had somehow startled her. "Morning," she said.

"Want anything for breakfast?" he said, moving past her to the countertop.

"No, I'm alright," she said. "I'll probably grab something on the drive."

"To where?" he said.

"Oh. Well, I'm leaving for Matsushiro today."

"That's for the Unit 03 activation test, right?" he said.

"Yeah," Misato said. "Kaji will come stay the night with you guys, though."

Shinji started pulling clean dishes from the dishwasher and putting them away. As he did so, he tried to choose his words carefully. "I, uh, heard that there was an accident at the American base."

"Yes," Misato said. "But that was just an accident. Everything will go fine here. Dr. Akagi is the best." She sipped her coffee and looked behind her back, toward the hall, as if checking on something. "How are things with Asuka?" she said, after a moment.

"Fine," Shinji said.

"That's the kind of fine that says things aren't fine." Misato dumped the rest of her coffee in the sink and leaned against the counter, right next to him. "She being difficult?"

Shinji shrugged. "I don't know. Things were fine, and then she woke up in the middle of the night, we talked, and she hasn't said a word to me since."

"What was the last thing you talked about?"

_"My first sortie," he had said, then, "Unit 01 lost control. I couldn't remember any of it at first. It took till a few days later, after I got out of the hospital and moved in here, for it to come back to me. It hit all at once. I remembered it as if I had been the one doing it, not the Eva. If something like that happens to you, I want you to know that I get it. You can talk to me about it."_

_She looked at him, sideways. He hoped that she would admit it, or tell him something new that he could help with, or just give him some response that would let him orient himself in this chaotic new development._

_"I want to be alone," she had said instead._

Shinji shook his head. "Just some stuff," he said.

Misato's expression was openly skeptical, but she didn't press it further. "Can I give you some advice?" she said.

"I guess."

"Whatever she's holding back on, whatever she's worried about, it isn't your fault. When she's ready to talk, she'll talk."

"She's taking her sweet time," Shinji said.

Misato knocked her fist against his shoulder, shoving him. "Don't be a little jerk," she said, then watched as he grinned, unable to help himself. "Hey, there you are. Welcome back."

He shook his head and went back to the dishes. "I just hope whoever you fly in to pilot the new unit isn't a weirdo," he said. "There's enough of us already."

Misato paused. "Yeah," she said. "I'll keep that in mind."

((()))

Asuka leaned against the hallway wall and listened until Misato was finished. She heard only snippets of the personal information, but it was enough. _He was supposed to wait for her to talk?_ What was that supposed to mean? Like she needed time to figure out what she wanted to say?

A part of it was right. She had avoided him for a week, after all. He had tried to talk with her. Maybe she had needed the time. But the rest of her wasn't about to let Misato Katsuragi—the woman who couldn't keep any man—make her out to be some coward who couldn't talk to her own boyfriend.

She listened until she heard the front door slide shut behind Misato, then waited. She tried to gauge how long she needed to wait before stepping out so that it didn't look like she had been listening. Thirty seconds? A minute? What was the most natural?

A minute should do it. She had just begun counting silently when Shinji rounded the corner into the hallway and nearly ran into her.

He pulled back at the last moment, curling away from her. "Oh, sorry."

He looked her up and down, saw that she was hugging tight against the wall and that she was still in the big t-shirt she'd worn to bed. She watched him realize that she had definitely been listening to his conversation. His lips began to move, his eyebrows began to furrow, and she knew he was about to question her.

So, she went on the attack. "Watch where you're walking, Third."

"Me?" he said. "You're the one standing in the middle of the hallway."

"Oh sure. You were just trying to bump into me as an excuse."

"An excuse for what?"

"For a way to bump into me and, y'know, do stuff."

"I was going to my room to get my—wait what stuff?"

"I don't know. Whatever pervert crap you come up with."

Shinji shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. "You were eavesdropping!"

"No," Asuka said, pointing at him, "you heard me standing here and tried to bump into me as an excuse to grab my boobs!"

Shinji turned beat red. "I-I-I didn't do that at all! I wasn't even thinking about your... your..."

"Uh huh. A likely story." Asuka said, moving past him to the kitchen. Take that, Misato. Now who isn't ready to talk?

((()))

Clamps locked around the Alpine's wheels and the car tram took off down the tunnel, whisking along a steep incline into the geofront. The ride would take about fifteen minutes, so Misato reclined her seat and ate her fast food breakfast like a slob. No one was around, anyway.

She thumbed her stereo control. This far underground, her car antenna couldn't pick up a thing. The CD player ca-chunked and whirred into action. Soon she had music to cover her chomping.

She watched the wall stanchions sliding past beyond her windshield, chewed, and thought. Shinji assumed they were bringing in a kid with the Eva, a new pilot with a new unit. She had spent the past days worrying about whether or not he would figure out that the pilot was Suzuhara, but it never occurred to her that he might just make the logical guess that the pilot would be an import like Asuka.

Not for the first time, she felt guilty about not telling him, but only for a moment. Once the test was over, once Unit 03 was added to the combat roster, then there would be plenty of time for Shinji, Asuka, and Rei to adjust to their classmate being the new Fourth Child.

By the time the tram came to a stop and the Alpine was released from its clutches, Misato had a whole new perspective. Maybe, since Asuka had definitely been hiding in the hallway this morning, they would even be talking again by the time she got back. Kaji was due to stay the night, so maybe he would even patch things up with Asuka and put whatever weirdness they'd had behind them. She would return from Matsushiro with a new pilot and new unit to a revitalized, happy home.

Sometimes, Misato reflected as she turned into the convoy muster, you just had to leave to make things better.

She pulled up the the lead vehicle and immediately lost her smile. "Shit," she said, balling up the last food wrapper and tossing it in the floorboard. She hopped out.

"Good morning, Sub-Commander Fuyutski," she said, saluting.

"Morning, Major," he replied. "That's quite a vehicle you have there."

"Oh, yeah," she said. "It's a hobby." She looked at Ritsuko, who was standing next to Fuyutski. "How is the loading coming, Doctor?"

"Fine. We're actually finished and ready to go when you are."

Misato opened her mouth to speak, but Fuyutski cut her off. He pointed to the massive, 24-wheeled hauler next to them. "Will we be traveling in the point vehicle, Doctor?"

"Yes, sir," Ritsuko said. "It should be about a three hour drive, sir."

"Fantastic. I'll get settled in, then."

Misato watched Fuyutski walk away. Once he was aboard the hauler, and out of sight, she rushed to Ritsuko's side. "What is he doing here?"

"He showed up twenty minutes ago. Said he's coming along."

"Why?" Misato said.

"I didn't ask." Ritsuko gestured to her clipboard, as if there was something interesting to show Misato. For her part, Misato pretended to be interested.

"Has he ever sat in on something before?" she said.

"Only a few synch tests, but those were for Rei, and they were years ago."

"You think he's keeping an eye on us?"

"Obviously," Ritsuko replied.

"What for?"

"I've no idea."

Misato nodded at the clipboard and pointed at it for emphasis. "How do you want to play this?"

"Play it?" Akagi said. "Misato, we've got nothing to hide here. We just do our jobs."

Misato wanted to press the issue, but realized A: it would get no where, and B: she could only fake this clipboard crap for so long before it became obvious and stupid.

"Fine," she said. "I'll follow your lead."

((()))

The two kids were in the kitchen together, Shinji continuing to pack his lunch, Asuka sitting at the table, watching.

"Misato is gone today, right?" Asuka said.

"Yeah. She's got the activation test. Kaji is coming over tonight."

"For what? As a babysitter?"

"I guess." Shinji gestured to the phone. "What are you doing?"

"Making your day better," she said. She opened the drawer beneath the phone and pulled out the notepad that always sat there, numbers and names scrawled across it. Horaki residence, takeout, takeout, takeout, Suzuhara residence, more takeout...

"There," she muttered, finding the correct number. She dialed.

"What are you doing?" Shinji said.

She held up a finger. The phone rang. Then a voice.

"Tokyo-3 First Municipal Middle. How can I help you?"

Asuka coughed and pitched her voice to do her best impression of her commanding officer. "Uh, yes, this is Major Katsuragi with Nerv Operations Management. I'm Shinji Ikari's legal guardian."

Shinji moved in, reaching for the phone. Asuka planted a palm in his sternum and turned him away.

"Yes," said the voice on the phone, waiting for more.

"I'm calling to inform you that Shinji won't be in today. He's terribly sick."

Shinji grabbed her arm and tried to pull her in, to get the phone. "Asuka!" he hissed.

"Shut up!" she said, holding the receiver away for a moment.

"Ms. Katsuragi? Is everything alright?"

Shinji pushed her hand aside by the wrist. His fingertips grasped for the phone, nearly reaching it. Asuka spun again and stuck her foot in his shin, sending him tumbling.

She righted herself and put the receiver comfortably back in the crook of her shoulder. "Sorry, I'm feeding my penguin."

"Your what?"

"Do you need anything else from me?" Asuka said. Shinji was standing back up, so she jogged away, down the hall and into her room.

"Not really," the voice continued. "We'll be sure to send his homework to him this evening. Would you be okay with a student aide bringing it by?"

Shinji followed her, running into her room before she could stop him. She bit down a laugh and she jumped onto her bed, still holding the phone to her ear.

"That'll be fine," she said.

"You have a good day, Ms. Katsuragi."

Shinji launched himself toward her, arms outstretched.

"Okay you too bye-bye!" Asuka said. Her thumb found the end call button just before Shinji tackled her. They landed together on the bed, one of his hands pinning her wrist while he pried the phone out of her grip.

"Hello! Hello?" he said, into the dead receiver. He tossed the phone aside. "Why did you do that?"

Asuka was laughing too hard to respond. She slapped his shoulder and closed her eyes.

"Why did you do that?" he repeated, but through a smile. He tried to wipe it away, but couldn't. "I had a test today."

That did it. Her laugh became a howl.

Shinji couldn't contain it and started laughing, too. He rolled onto his side and laughed with her.

"'I had a test today'," she said, as the laughs gave way to chuckles.

"I did," he said, as the chuckles faded to an occasional grunt.

"Yeah, well, now you don't," she said.

They laid there for a moment, both staring at the ceiling. Asuka listened. Outside, the noise of a truck rumbling by. From the kitchen, the clatter of the ice maker on auto-cycle. In her chest, the beating of her heart; next to her, the breaths of a boy she loved.

"I'm sorry I've been a jerk," she said, without looking at him.

"You haven't been a jerk."

"I wanna tell you stuff but I don't know how." It was easier to speak to him like this, in the aftermath of the silliness. It was easy to not look at him. "I'm worried you'll hate me."

She heard him shake his head. The brush of his hair on the bedsheets. "I'll never hate you."

Overhead, her fan chopped the air, slowly. She watched the blades spin, tracking them with her eyes until the ceiling behind the fan became as blurry as the blades had once been. When she couldn't look at it anymore, she closed her eyes. It was then that she spoke the truth.

"My mom killed herself when I was four," she said. "She was in a hospital. My dad never told me why, really, but I know that she was crazy."

The lump in her throat showed up immediately, but she forced it down and continued.

"I went to see her every week. She had this doll she would talk to. She acted like it was me, called it my name. She used to feed it from plastic bottles." She wiped her eyes preemptively. "There was a glass window I could see her through. Not like on the door, but on the wall, like I was meant to."

"Like an observation window." Shinji's voice was quiet but not distant. He wasn't trying to shush her, she realized.

"Yeah, exactly. I saw her every week through that window, talking to that doll. I wanted to bang on the glass and tell her that I was right there, that I needed her more. But I never did."

"Did she ever see you?"

"Once. She looked at me and pointed me out to the doll. She said the doll needed to drink its milk, or that 'mean girl over there' was going to laugh at her."

The tears came on fast. She wiped her eyes again.

"She hanged herself not too long after that. I had just been selected to be a pilot that day, and I told my dad I wanted to tell her. Some idiot part of me figured that if I became a pilot, my mom would start looking at me, would talk to me." She took a deep breath, steadying herself. "I walked in on her hanging there. The doll was hanging next to her on its own noose."

"Asuka—"

She didn't let him finish. She had to plunge ahead and finish this now, or she'd never say any of it again. "I didn't cry at the funeral. I told people that I was done crying, that I didn't need to cry. I didn't need friends, either. I didn't need my dad, and I didn't need my step-mom. I didn't need anyone. I needed me and my Eva, that's all.

"Now I don't have my Eva, I'm over here crying, and I've spent the last week being a bitch to the only boy who ever said he loved me, so I'm thinking maybe my crazy mom was right. Maybe I was that mean girl the whole time."

"You're not a mean girl."

"Oh yeah? What do you call a person who promises she'll never need anyone and then ends up crying like a baby?" She balled her fists and slammed them into the sides of her head. "I'm pathetic!"

She felt him move by the way the bed rocked. The next thing she knew, his arms were around her, one across her chest, the other slipping across her shoulders. His forehead touched her temple; his nose was against her cheek, and she smelled the tears that ran down his face, too.

"Stop that," he said, a tremble in his voice.

"I'm worthless."

"I don't want to hear you say that." He pulled her close.

She felt his breath on her cheek. "Why?"

"It's too sad," he said. "And it's wrong. You're not worthless."

"I'm an awful person."

"No," he said. "You're my favorite person."

She giggled through the tears and rolled into him, pressing her forehead to his. "I'm a coward for crying like this."

"Then I'm a coward, too."

She lay still. His arms were around her. She placed her palm on his chest and felt his heart beating.

Time passed. The rays of the sun grew longer in the room, and she felt their heat on her bare shoulders and legs. Her tears dried. Shinji didn't leave.

She opened her eyes and found him looking at her, his blue eyes filling her vision.

"Were you watching me?" she said.

He shrugged. "A little."

"Do you hate me now?"

He shook his head. "Never."

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes."

She bit her lip. "Do you wanna kiss me?"

"Always," he said.

So he did.

((()))

Kaji came over at a quarter-to-six. Shinji met him at the door, and walked with him into the kitchen. Dinner was already on the stove, simmering. "You can put your stuff in the living room for now," Shinji said, standing rigidly by the refrigerator. Asuka appeared and stood beside her co-pilot, watching Kaji. Something was clearly up.

"Thanks," Kaji said. He glanced at the kitchen trash can and saw the crumpled snack wrappers, chip bags, and soda cans. He looked at the two children, then, his eyes checking them from head to toe. Then he looked at the charging base for the apartment's cordless phone, its phone missing. He looked back at the kids.

"You skipped school," he said, to Shinji.

"What!?" Asuka started. "He did no such thing! That's a lie!"

"Crap," Shinji said.

She punched him in the arm. "Shut up!"

"He figured it out!" Shinji said. "I told you it wouldn't work!"

Kaji let the bickering continue for a minute while he placed his overnight bag in the living room. From the kitchen, he heard more slapping and whimpered apologetics. When the noise died away, he returned.

"Got that out of your systems?" he said.

"I think so," Shinji said, rubbing his bruised shoulder.

"Good. Asuka?"

"Hrmph."

"Good enough." Kaji looked between the two of them. Smoke was wafting from the stove, and the crackle of too much flame under a pan was audible. "Dinner smells good."

Shinji's eyes went wide. "Oh, crap."

The Third Child ran across to the stove and started work, lifting the pan aside and swatting the smoke with a towel. The smoke alarm buzzed, and Pen-Pen took off across the kitchen, running for cover.

Kaji walked to the fridge and pulled out one of Katsuragi's beers and a soda. He held out the soda to Asuka.

"Want to show me the balcony?" he said.

"What for?" she muttered, taking the soda.

"For one, so I can see it. For two, so we can get away from all this noise," he said. "And, for three, so I can apologize to my friend."

Asuka looked at Shinji as he fought the smoke, then back to Kaji. "Alright," she said.

((()))

"I didn't think we were friends," Asuka said, a moment later.

Kaji slid the deck door shut behind him and walked to the railing. He cracked his beer open and took a swig. "What else would we be?"

Asuka stood apart from him. She had always felt comfortable around Kaji, but since the watermelon incident she felt awkward even thinking about him. She leaned on the railing, too, a full five feet from him.

"You're an adult," she said. "Kids and adults aren't friends."

"That sounds like an Asuka rule."

"It's an everyone rule."

"Well, forgive me all to hell for caring about you, kid."

Asuka looked at him. "Apologies start with 'I'm sorry'."

"I said I was going to apologize to my friend." Kaji gestured broadly, turning his waist to let his arms encompass all of creation. "But since we aren't friends…"

"Fine," Asuka said. "You can be my friend."

"Thank you," Kaji said. He placed his forearms on the railing and looked out across the evening skyline. "Sometimes, we have to get things off our chests and tell someone how we feel. I wanted to give you that chance, so I took you to a place that I find very peaceful, where I go to let off steam."

Asuka watched him, silent.

"Everything you mentioned the other day, I already knew about. I've known about it all since before I met you. I never brought it up because, most of the time, people need the space to bring things up on their own. It isn't my place to tell you how to be or how to live your life, Asuka. I'm not your father.

"So I apologize if that trip made you feel uncomfortable. My goal was to help you out, but I don't think I did." Kaji took a drink. "Anyway, you know that I'll never share that information with someone who doesn't already know it. Anything you say to me is private. Always has been."

Asuka was quiet for a moment. She held her soda in both hands, thumb rubbing the lip of it while she watched the street below.

"You did help me," she said. She cleared her throat. "I found someone to talk to."

"I'm glad to hear that."

"It's Shinji," she clarified.

"I figured."

"Hey, so, I think I owe you an apology, too."

Kaji shook his head. "None of that stuff in the garden was your fault, Asuka."

"I don't mean in the garden." Asuka thumbed her can again, flicking the tab. Ting. Ting. Ting. She hunched her shoulders, cringing at what she wanted to say. "I don't like thinking about this," she said.

"Oh," he said, "that."

Asuka nodded. Her mind placed her back several months, to a sunset much like tonight's, but in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. She remembered lying on the deck, watching the last rays of light, Kaji next to her. They had talked, and then she—

"I shouldn't have done that," she said, shuddering despite the warm weather.

"You didn't do anything," Kaji said.

"But I tried." She put one hand to her face. "I've spent a lot of time trying to be an adult, Kaji. I don't want to do things like that anymore. I don't want to be that way. Not to you."

A part of her worried that Kaji might try to hug her, but he kept his distance.

"I know you don't," he said. "I knew you didn't really want to be like that even that night. You're a good person, Asuka. I don't judge you for that mistake."

"Thank you," she tried to say, but choked on it. She stopped herself, took a deep breath, and, for the second time that day, wiped her tears clean without trying to hide it. It felt good.

"Thanks," she said, more successfully.

"Anytime," Kaji said. He reached out with his beer. "To being friends."

"Sure," Asuka said, smiling. The cans clinked.

She looked behind them, into the kitchen. Shinji was finishing dinner. The smoke was gone, and Pen-Pen was calmly standing next to the table, waiting for his own food. She watched Shinji as he prepared three plates, then took his apron off and hanged it on its hook.

"Uh-oh," Kaji said.

"What?" she said.

"I know that face. What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing," she lied, grinning. "Okay. I've got a favor to ask."

Kaji finished his beer, then crumpled it with a squeeze. "Let's hear it," he said.

So she told him.

((()))

Friday morning. First bell was to ring in five minutes, and Tokyo-3 First Municipal Junior High School secretary Hiroko Mizuno was running late. Her kid sister was late waking up, late getting dressed, and late at everything else, which in turn made Hiroko late for work. She had just enough time to get to her desk in the front office before the first class of the day. As she entered, she caught a disapproving look from Principal Takashi, who then disappeared into his office. The rest of the women in the office secretary pool did not bother to look up at her.

Not for the first time in the past year, Hiroko wished that she could quit this stupid job. The climate sucked, the responsibilities sucked, and the paperwork definitely sucked. In the past two weeks alone she'd spent seven hours with Nerv administrators running security checks for "inter-school pilot enrollment changes". For every other kid, a change in schedule or attendance was handled in a few minutes. But not for the 2-A kids, no. For them, every change had an NDA attached, every file had to be scrutinized and approved by a licensed Nerv agent, and all of it needed signatures in triplicate. It was exhausting.

Unfortunately, there weren't many jobs available in the current economic climate—impending war at every turn didn't help—and so here she was, stuck.

At one minute to first bell, a man appeared in front of her desk. She looked up and saw his Nerv uniform. She looked higher and saw his scruffy, handsome face. "Hello," he said. "I'm Inspector Ryoji Kaji, Nerv intelligence. I'd like to talk to you about one of our pilot's enrollment status."

"Shit," said Hiroko Mizuno.

((()))

Shinji walked with Asuka to class. The hallways were empty, and from each classroom came the sound of teachers starting the first class of the day—a chorus of standing, bowing, and sitting, the tick-tack of chalk hitting blackboard, and chair legs sliding on tile. Shinji looked at her quickly, then put his eyes back on the hallway.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing."

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Hikari was in the hallway, leaning out of 2-A's door as she hanged the completed morning attendance roster on its peg. She saw them approaching and grinned. "Asuka!" she said, letting the door close behind her, muffling the sudden noise of the class reacting to the name.

"Hey, Hikari," Asuka said, trying to downplay her excitement. Hikari hugged her nevertheless, and it did a lot to lessen her faux-dour mood.

"Are you back?" Hikari said.

Asuka nodded. "I am. I still don't know any Kanji." She indicated Shinji. "Plus, he needs my help. With everything."

"Here's the transfer notice," Shinji said, handing over the office-approved slip of paper.

Hikari took it with a glance at him, but didn't seem to care about his presence. "I'll go in and announce you," she said, walking away. Before she re-entered the classroom, she turned. "Hey, Asuka?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm really glad you decided to come back."

Asuka nodded, forcing a small smile. "Thanks, Hikari."

Hikari disappeared into the classroom. Asuka and Shinji stood in the hallway, waiting. To Shinji, she seemed to be thinking her way through her decision again, and took her silence as a worry.

"You going to say something or keep staring at me?" she said.

"Oh," he said. "Uh…"

"Just spit it out, Third."

"I just… Yesterday you said you hated going back on all that stuff you promised yourself as a kid."

"Yeah."

"Well, today you're back here, re-enrolled. Didn't you promise you were done with this?"

"I did," she said.

"I was just wondering if you had any trouble with this." Shinji shrugged. "Like, do you see this as going back on a promise to yourself? Did you see it that way?"

"I did, yeah. I'm definitely breaking a promise." Asuka looked at Shinji. "But then I figured, who cares? I'll do what I want."

The door opened again and Hikari smiled at them. "Come on in," she said.

Asuka took a breath and stepped inside. Immediately, Shinji heard the room detonate with the clamor of surprised teenagers. Asuka gave an extravagant bow to the room, soaking in the noise. The sight brought a grin to his lips.

Hikari, still holding the door open, looked at him. "You, too, Ikari."

((()))

Nerv's Matsushiro base was little more than a collection of prefab buildings erected around a central test bay, which itself was a reinforced, Evangelion-sized concrete hole in the ground. It was also very empty when the supply convoy arrived at the site. Most of Misato's Thursday was spent with Ritsuko as she supervised the process of filling the hole with gimbals, power cabling, sensor banks, lights, gangways, and a fully functioning cage system—all the things that a newly-arrived Evangelion needed to pass its first activation test.

The ride to Matsushiro had been awkward. The workday after had been awkward, too. No matter where Ritsuko was, Sub-Commander Fuyutski wasn't far behind, checking her work, making comments, and questioning everything. He was entirely pleasant about it, but all the pleasantness in the world couldn't outweigh the foreboding brought on by his constant presence and illusive purpose.

By Thursday night, Misato had been convinced that Fuyutski was there just to watch Ritsuko. But now, on Friday, she was less sure. The Sub-Commander had started the day by finding her in the communications trailer as she finished up a call to air traffic control in Kyoto.

"Any word?" he said.

"The flight is behind schedule," she told him. "We should have a drop-off by 0930."

"And the pilot?"

"On schedule, just as we thought. I'm planning to speak with him once we get the Unit squared away."

"Very good. And now?"

Misato pointed at the backup generators, in the next equipment shed. "Checking power requirements."

"Ah. Mind if I join you?" he asked, as if she could say no.

Unit 03 arrived at its new time. The carrier lowered it into position within the testing cage, hovering in place, blasting the work site with downdraft from its turbojets while the auto-gimbals disengaged the Evangelion from its transport crucifix. Then the carrier lifted off, peeling away towards home again.

Misato checked the test site, ensured that the technicians were following Ritsuko's orders, made adjustments to the control booth's logistical layout, and gave a pep-talk to the new pilot. Fuyutski stayed with her the entire time. Mostly he just watched, which compelled Misato to narrate her actions to him, explain everything as if he were judging her decisions. But he simply nodded, smiled, and kept right with her.

"How is he?" Ritsuko asked, once they were all together again in the control booth.

"The Fourth Child?" Misato said. "He seems confident. Prepared."

On the screen, Toji Suzuhara was stepping into the entry plug. His new plugsuit looked good on him, as if he belonged in it. There was no audio feed, so Misato saw him talking with a technician as he got settled. He looked the tech in the eyes and listened intently.

"Quite a bit different from Shinji, don't you think?" Ritsuko said, checking her datapad.

Misato didn't reply.

Fuyutski appeared beside her, done inspecting a control terminal at the other end of the room. "Everything seems to be on schedule. Well done."

"Thank you, sir," Misato said.

"Soon you'll have four Evangelions under your command, Major. How does it feel?"

Misato smiled. "Like I could conquer the world, sir."

She was worried that the joke might not land, but the Sub-Commander returned her smile.

"I'm sure it does," he said. "Just try to designate a place for us old folks in your new utopia, eh?"

"No promises, sir."

On screen, the plug's lid sealed shut, and the body of the plug corkscrewed into place. The covering groaned into place and locked tight. Soon, the familiar sounds of start-up chatter surrounded Misato as Ritsuko led her team through the final safety checks.

"Initiating level one connection. Beginning pulse broadcast."

"Nominal values across all graphs."

"Checklist complete through item 1350."

"Initial contact: status green."

Ritsuko held her datapad at her side, watching the test intently. "Permission given to move to phase two."

"Nerve system interlink is a go."

"Checklist complete through item 2550."

"All harmonics are reading normal values."

"Approaching absolute borderline."

Misato swiveled her head to watch the harmonics readout. The absolute borderline was red, red, red, and then flickered green.

Then it suddenly flowed backwards, a complete harmonics cascade failure. Red emergency lighting blitzed across half the consoles in the room.

"Rits—" she started, but Ritsuko was already shouting.

"Break the circuit! Total systems shutdown now!"

One of the techs wheeled around. "No response. I'm reading an autonomous energy signature within the Eva."

"An Angel?" Ritsuko said.

Misato looked at Fuyutski, who seemed just as shocked as anyone else. The control booth was panicking. Someone moved to the exit, slamming open the door. Outside light splashed in. Another tech ripped a circuit board out of the primary harmonics console, trying to hard reboot it.

Ritsuko grabbed Misato by the arm. "It's going to blow," she said.

"Energy signature rising!" someone shouted.

Misato grabbed Fuyutski. "Get down!" she said, yanking him off his feet.

She felt the floor as she slammed into it. Fuyutski exhaled with a grunt, landing next to her. He looked at her, some last-ditch idea springing to his lips. "We need to—"

Then with sudden brightness and incredible sound, the world was whiplashed into darkness.


	21. The Stomach

They call him Toji the Stomach, not because he can weather a storm or handle gross movies or skin his knee and not have to cover his eyes, like how sometimes you say "he's got the stomach for it" or whatever. Nah, they call him the Stomach because he eats a lot. He eats a ton. He buys his lunch from the school store. It fills two bags almost every time, and he's learned how to check it out quickly so that no one sees him swipe his government meal card.

Sometimes his dad tells him that he's gonna get fat one day. "When that metabolism of yers slows down" is how it always starts, and he always says back "probably not, old man". He doesn't say it too loud these days, though, on account of he can't afford a fight right now. Other times he would have the fight, because screw it, why not? But not now. Not with things the way they are.

Monday

He beats his alarm clock out of bed. He beats it most mornings. He's up before it beeps, turns it off and leaps out of bed. He's in the shower in a flash and bangs out the routine—face, hair, chest, arms, legs, feet, balls, butt—in three minutes flat. Boom.

Metabolism. Yeah, right. He's got a metabolism but mostly what he's got is hyperactivity. He can't sit still. Feet bumping in class, knees bobbing at the dinner table, head on a swivel all the time. Ready to go. Ready to fight or laugh. Mostly, he's ready to scope some babes. He's down for babes.

Not many friends, though. He could have more, but he doesn't want them, he tells himself. A lot of guys clump together in herds. They sit around a big table in the courtyard at lunch, passing snacks around and sending out ambassadors to the girls' herd, and then the girls will send one back, and on and on. He tells himself he hates it. That's not how you talk to a girl. When Toji talks to a girl, he'll do it himself. None of this ping-pong ambassador crap.

He hasn't talked to a girl yet, but he'll get there. He just hasn't found one worth talking to, that's all. He's definitely not scared.

After the shower, he gets dressed and pops into the kitchen. Checks the cupboard. Not much. He grabs two slices of bread and shoves one in his mouth.

The old man is at the kitchen table, sipping his coffee. He doesn't need to look to see the bags under his dad's eyes. "You going to the hospital after school?" his dad asks.

"Yeah," he says back.

He doesn't say goodbye as he leaves the house. He loves his dad, of course, and his dad loves him. No one needs to say it out loud. They both know it. It's fine.

((()))

The main problem with a huge herd of dudes hanging out together is that it just ain't manly. A real man doesn't need a herd. Keep your friend count low. A friend isn't a friend unless he's basically a brother. That's why you've gotta thin the list down to a lean wolf pack.

Toji has his wolf pack.

Kensuke is his fellow wolf. Like a nerdy wolf, though. The wolf that counts how many gazelle there are or whatever, and tells the pack. The accountant wolf. Every pack has their accountant wolf to keep track of the bones and crap like that. Kensuke has been with him since elementary school. He's got Kensuke's back, and Kensuke has his back. They run scams, make money, and chill almost every day. Nothing has ever come between them.

Most afternoons, Kensuke sits on the curb while he shoots hoops. Kensuke isn't a basketball type, but that's cool, because Toji isn't a weirdo who loves tanks more than people, so it all works out.

He finds Kensuke on the corner of Ozawa and Prefect, on their way to school. This morning, though, he gets a surprise.

"Shinji!" he shouts, before he can control himself.

Shinji Ikari smiles at him. Shinji's smile has always looked to Toji like there's something wrong, like he's nervous. But since he had known him back when Shinji didn't smile at all, he takes even a nervous smile as a good thing. He jogs up and slaps Shinji on the shoulder.

"What are you doing here?" he says. Shinji hasn't walked on their route since he got kicked out.

Kensuke speaks up. "He's back home now."

"No way," he says.

"Yeah," Shinji says.

"Back with Ms. Misato? That's what's up."

Shinji shakes his head. "Come on."

Kensuke nods. "Toji's right. It's what's up."

"Don't start this again, guys."

"Dude. Shinji. Misato is a mega-babe."

"Come on…" Shinji says.

Kensuke gestures towards him in a way that means _Please be cool,_ so he decides to be cool.

"How's the Red Devil?" he says, instead.

Shinji rolls his eyes and starts walking to school. Kensuke follows him.

"What?" he finds himself saying, to his friends' backs. "Oh, you guys would've laughed at that two months ago."

((()))

They walk for a few blocks, turn onto Watanabe and head south. Shinji and Kensuke talk the whole way. Toji walks behind them. He tosses his basketball back and forth between his palms, dribbles it in and out of lampposts, and practices his step-back when the other two slow down. He's got good handling, he thinks. Could try out for the team.

He won't, though. The coach usually hits up players via their mobile phones, and he doesn't have one. Dad says maybe next year, when things turn around.

The guys talk about the regular Kensuke crap. Force deployment, weapons research—all the crap Kensuke rips off his dad's PC. At one point, Kensuke brings up the new Evangelion again. Kensuke is hyped. He's been hyped about it all week. He wonders who the new pilot will be. Will they send one in like Asuka?

Shinji tells him that he has no idea.

Toji speaks up, mentioning that that's just what he needs—another weirdo.

Kensuke tells him to keep dribbling.

Toji tells him his mom dribbles real good. It doesn't make much sense—Kensuke's mom is dead, after all—but it puts an end to the conversation. Two months ago, they would have laughed about Asuka being weird, back when it was a commonly accepted fact of the universe, just one among many. The sun rises in the east, dogs hate cats, and Asuka Soryu sucks butt.

But now things are weird.

Watanabe intersects with Inoki, and their trio becomes a foursome.

Ayanami is waiting at the intersection. She's holds her schoolbag with both hands and watches them approach. Shinji says hi. Kensuke says hi. Toji says nothing.

Ayanami walks with Kensuke. They don't hold hands or anything, but they stand closer than any boy and girl stand when they aren't holding hands. Toji dribbles and watches them. Kensuke doesn't ask her about the explosion thing, and Shinji doesn't bring it up, either. In fact, after Kensuke says hi to her, they almost don't talk at all. The two guys keep up a conversation while Rei watches.

Someone else might not have thought she was watching. She kept her eyes on the path in front of her almost the entire time. If it weren't for her standing so close to Kensuke, she might have been just another person on the sidewalk.

But Toji had watched her for her entire time at school. Most kids avoided looking at her—the spooky girl with the blue hair and red eyes with no parents—but he had never been scared. He had learned how she paid attention to things. The little sideways glances. The way she tilts her head to look out the window when she was really listening to a conversation near her. The way she used to look at Shinji right after he moved in.

Right now, he knows she's paying attention to Kensuke.

Toji likes Rei. Not like-likes her. He normal likes her. She doesn't get along with most people, but not because she's mean. She just doesn't fit in. No herd, no pack. She's a lone wolf. When he looks at her eyes as she deliberately doesn't look at something she's interested in, a part of him understands.

Not that he's like that. He fits in fine. His pack is rock solid.

He dribbles and walks and watches and listens.

((()))

School sucks until lunch. Lunch usually rocks. Today, he dumps his bag of bought lunch on the desk and looks at Kensuke. He asks Kensuke if he wants to eat with him. Kensuke hems, haws, and eventually makes an excuse. "I just kinda wanna eat with Rei today."

Toji informs him that he can also eat with Rei. He likes Rei. Not like-likes her, but normal likes her.

"Sorry man. I just wanna have some time with her."

So he eats alone, and he eats quickly. He bounces out to the basketball court for the last half of lunch and practices. Three point shots, nothing but net. It feels good to be outside, to be moving and hitting his mark every time. He jukes and slides around imaginary defenders, hitting two-point layups from just outside the paint, textbook-smooth.

He goes a little over the end of the lunch period. He realizes the mistake immediately when he sees the class rep standing in the hallway, looking for him. He cringes but walks forward, ready for the beating.

She spots him. "Suzuhara!" she says, in the way she does when she's pissed: SU-ZUH-HAR-AH, like she's cutting off a turd with each syllable. The thought of a turd makes him grin. It's a bad move.

"Don't you know how to tell time?" she says.

He tells her he ain't got a watch.

"Well, get one!"

He tells her that ain't likely.

"Get inside!"

He gets inside.

((()))

After school, he rides the train to the hospital. The basketball is in his hands, tossing back and forth between his hands. Off the train, he dribbles to the door, then tucks it under his arm as he walks in. The secretary at the front desk smiles at him as he signs in. He smiles back. They haven't ever talked, but they smile at each other every day, except for on Wednesdays when she doesn't work.

He takes the elevator to the fourteenth floor. He walks down the hall—108 steps, most days—and stops at room 1437, like always. The door is open. He knocks on the open frame before stepping in.

Sakura is sleeping. A nurse is checking her vitals. She sees him come in, smiles.

"Physical therapy," she says, by way of explanation. "She's worn out."

Toji nods and gives his best smile back. He thanks her and she leaves, but he still isn't alone with his sister. 1437 is a double room. The curtain is pulled so he can't see the second patient, but he can hear them. Their breathing is a ripping wheeze, rising and falling with the beeping drone of a ventilator. The sound makes him imagine what their injuries must be like, and none of his imaginings are pretty.

If he could, he'd get Sakura out of here. She shouldn't have to stay here. She needs better care. The smiles aren't going to cut it.

He sets the basketball between his feet, takes a seat next to the bed, and listens to the ragged breaths of the neighbor as he watches his sister sleep, waiting for something, anything, to change the way things are.

Tuesday

Alarm clock beeps. He smacks it off. Up, shower, towel, teeth, clothes, breakfast.

"You going to the hospital after school?"

Yup. Out the door.

((()))

School sucks. Lunch sucks, too. Kensuke dodges even quicker. Toji wishes he had Shinji around still. At least Shinji doesn't have some girlfriend around to ditch him for.

He eats his lunch fast and heads for the door, basketball in hand, headed for the court, but a slim arm bars his way. The slim arm slides farther and becomes the slim body of Hikari Horaki.

"Get a watch yet?" she says.

He tells her nah, he ain't.

"Can I trust you to be back on time without one?"

He thinks about lying, but something tells him he's better off with the truth. "Nah, not a bit."

Hikari sighs. She walks back to her desk and grabs her own lunch, then comes back. "Okay," she says, "lead the way."

He tries to tell her she doesn't need to do whatever this is she's doing, and she tells him to hurry up.

So he hurries up.

((()))

She sits on a bench at courtside while he shoots, eating and watching. His layups smack backboard and drop. His three point shots eat rim and bounce. Every other shot makes him look like a moron. What is going on today?

He looks at her from time to time. She's definitely watching.

He tries to focus. Why does he need an audience? Who cares if he's late getting back to class? She sees him walk in every morning without a backpack. How much learning is he really gonna miss if he doesn't even bring a damn backpack to school? He doesn't need a babysitter.

He shoots from behind the three-point line. The ball goes in with a satisfying swish.

"Nice shot," Hikari says.

He looks at her and manages an Uh, thanks.

Time passes. She speaks up again. "Time to head back."

He heads back with her. On the way, he looks at her when she isn't looking. She looks at him when he isn't looking. Eventually, they look at each other.

"So," they both begin, then apologize, then laugh.

He tells her to go ahead.

"You're pretty good," she says.

Yeah, I am, he begins, but then he tries to spin the ball on his finger and drops it. He catches it with his other hand, but he still looks like an idiot.

She laughs, but not at him. He knows what it feels like when people laugh at him. That's the feeling when his test score gets read aloud on accident, or when he gets called on when he doesn't have his hand up, or in third grade when a kid actually saw his meal card and told the other kids. Hikari isn't laughing like that. The laugh is at the ball. Her smile is at him.

He thanks her for coming out to keep an eye on his time.

"It was fun, actually," she said. "I'd like to do it again if you're okay with that."

He is okay with that.

"Maybe we can just eat out here tomorrow, if that's alright?"

He tells her it's alright. They get back to class.

Maybe lunch didn't suck.

((()))

Train ride to the hospital. Dribble to the door. Smile at the check-in. Elevator up. 108 steps. Room 1437.

Sakura is awake. She's eating a cup of ice cream when he walks in. His dad is sitting next to her, in the chair. He doesn't stand up.

"Toji!" she says.

He stands and listens as she explains her recovery classes. Her friends have sent her more letters, and she's able to make her fingers on her right hand move way farther than she used to. The doctor comes in and talks to dad for a while. Toji finishes what ice cream she left behind.

After the visit, he leaves with his dad. On the sidewalk, he starts dribbling again.

"Wish you'd just give that stupid thing up," says the old man.

He looks at the old man and keeps dribbling. They don't speak the rest of the way home.

Wednesday

Alarm. Shower. Towel. Clothes. Breakfast. Out the door, no goodbye.

((()))

Rei isn't on the walk to school, so it's just the three stooges, at it again. They talk about the rest of the class and goof on the teacher. Toji chimes in when he can, but mostly he can't. They talk past him or just don't think about him. It's like they have a rubber band between them and every time he hits it, it bounces him back.

((()))

School sucks, but he looks forward to lunch. He thinks about it all morning, and he spends most of that morning watching Hikari Horaki. He's known her forever, but always seen her as a thorn in his side. Yesterday, he saw something new.

He always knew she was a caring person. She has sisters, and she takes her duties seriously. She was always at the top of test scores, the first one to volunteer, the first one to raise her hand. It was because of all that that he figured she didn't have time for his crap. But yesterday she literally helped him time his crap.

He likes her. Not like-likes her, but normal likes her—at least, he thinks as much.

The lunch bell rings. He stands to head to the school store, but stops when Hikari calls his name. "Suzuhara," she says. "Principal's office needs you."

Kensuke wheels in his seat. "What'd you do now?"

((()))

Principal Takashi is behind his big desk. In front of it set two chairs, one occupied, one not. Toji is familiar with the office, the desk, and the chairs. He's been here many times. What throws him off is the fact that, upon entering, Principal Takashi gestures to a seat and tells him to sit.

He does so, but it feels alien. He always stands and gets yelled at.

When he sits, Takashi leaves the office, and Toji is alone with the other seated occupant. She's a lady in a blue dress. Her hair is blonde, her heels are high, and the part of his mind that isn't terrified immediately files her under "babe".

"Mr. Suzuhara," she begins, "I'm Dr. Akagi, with Nerv. You and I have a lot to talk about."

((()))

He checks in with the Wednesday night clerk—a guy, one of the two that he sees there on most Wednesdays—and heads up to the room. He sits next to his sister while she eats a late dinner. His basketball is silent. His feet are silent.

They want him to be a pilot. They decided to ask him instead of his dad, which meant it was his decision. Akagi lined it all out for him, what the expectations were and what the job would entail. He'd have to go in after school almost every day for tests. He'd be trained. He'd work with the other three all the time, do what they did, learn what they knew. Like a team.

She had an answer to every one of his questions. Who would be his boss? Miss Misato. Would he get paid? No, but there was a stipend when he eventually turned eighteen.

What does he get for it now, then?

Depends you want, she said.

"What's wrong?"

He looks up. Sakura is staring at him.

"Nothing," he says.

"You look like you have to poop real bad."

He laughs for the first time today. Sakura laughs, too, caught up in his sudden humor. As their laughter dies away, he hears again the sucking wheeze of the man behind the curtain, and he feels confident that he made the right choice. He got the right price from Akagi.

He bounces the basketball once, emphatically, and looks at his sister. "You ain't gonna be stuck here forever," he tells her.

"I know," she says.

"You do?"

"Yeah." She points at her legs. "I'm healing."

He smiles. "For sure," he says.

Thursday

He plays snooze-ball with his alarm clock and gets up late. His dad gripes at him as he leaves the house, calls him lazy. He doesn't fire back. The old man has no idea what he's going through, and he ain't worth the wasted breath.

((()))

He misses Kensuke on the walk to school. He sees him during first period but doesn't talk to him. He doesn't know what to say. If he tells the kid what he's agreed to do, it'll crush him.

As the teacher speaks, he looks around the room. He catches Ayanami looking at him. He looks back at her. Neither breaks the stare for a long moment. Eventually, she turns away, and he goes back to staring at the ceiling.

((()))

Lunch arrives but he isn't hungry. He grabs his ball and heads for the door.

Hikari is waiting for him on the blacktop.

"Glad you aren't in trouble today," she says.

He stops in front of her where she sits on the bleachers. "Who says I was in trouble?" he says.

"Me," she says. "Why else do people go to the principal's office?"

There's nothing stopping him from telling whoever he wants. He hasn't signed nothing. Akagi didn't tell him to keep it secret. He could tell Kensuke or Shinji or his dad or whoever, but he hasn't. In truth, he doesn't feel like he can. He wonders if any of them would really care.

Hikari is looking at him. He doesn't know why, but he wants to tell her the truth.

He dribbles twice, three times, then clamps the ball between both palms.

"Y'know," he says, "you and me never talk too much."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Well." Hikari swings her feet. The soles of her shoes scrape the pavement with each stroke. "We could always talk more," she says.

Toji places his ball on the ground and sits on it. He runs his hands through his hair, and speaks without looking at her.

"I wasn't in trouble," he says. "There was a lady that came to see me. From Nerv."

"Oh," Hikari says.

"They want me to pilot one of those things."

"Are you going to do it?"

Toji nods.

"Have you told anyone else?"

He shakes his head. "Not yet. And please don't tell anybody, if you can."

"Of course. When do you, like, start?"

"Tomorrow. I'll be gone all day."

"Are you scared?"

 _No,_ he plans to say, but then he looks at her and watches his lie fall apart in her brown eyes, and speaks the truth.

"Yeah. It scares the crap out of me."

Hikari is quiet. In the distance, the bell rings—lunch is over. Neither of them move for a moment.

"We should go back in," he says, standing and picking up his ball.

Hikari stands, too, and before he knows it, she's stripped the ball from his grip. "What if we didn't?" she says.

"You're joking me, right?"

"Nope." She bounces the ball, two-handed. "Come on. Let's play a quick one-for-one."

"One-on-one," he says.

"Whatever," she says, and jogs past him, toward the goal. He watches her go until she shoots, the ball smacking off the rim like a gunshot.

He smiles and jogs after her.

Friday

Katsuragi meets him in the test bay, on the umbilical bridge. She shakes his hand, and for the first time he sees her in a different light.

"How are you doing, Mr. Suzuhara?"

"Alright," he says, then tries again. "I'm fine. Uh. Fine, ma'am."

She smiles, and a glimmer of Ms. Misato peeks out through the Major's hard gaze. "The suit fit alright?" she says.

He tells her it does, even though it doesn't. It clings everywhere and chafes like hell. He wonders if it was sized for Shinji and not him, or if all plugsuits suck to wear.

She gives him good luck, tells him it'll go fine, that she's excited to have him, and blah blah blah, and then she sends him up into the cockpit.

The entry plug screws in and fills with the watery goo he hasn't felt in months, since he and Kensuke ended up in Shinji's cockpit.

He breathes it in, suppressing the moment of panic he was told he would feel. He swallows it down and remains calm.

Then the activation begins. He can hear voices running through checklists, rambling off words, tech specs, and data. He thinks that Kensuke would love this part, then realizes he doesn't care what Kensuke thinks.

He doesn't care what Ms. Misato thinks, either, or Dr. Akagi, or his dad, or any of the teachers or friends at school. They're all good people—they mean well, they try hard, but they just don't understand him. Maybe no one ever will. Even Sakura will grow up, grow hard, and her love will change—she'll never love her brother the way she does now.

Maybe that's the thing, he thinks, as the screens around him shift from white to black to rainbow to orange, and his senses extend out into an intangible, greater space: maybe all he can do is love the people he loves, accept what flawed love they can give back, and make peace with that misunderstanding between them.

The voices on the radio change, panicked. The screens drip, swirl and discolor, their readouts shifting to an arterial red. Something in the vast body around him screams. Someone shouts about ejecting. No response. It's going critical. What's going critical? Toji grips the control yokes and shuts his eyes.

He thinks of Sakura, in her bed.

His father, eating alone.

Ayanami, her eyes meeting his,

and Horaki's face, smiling,

going for a shot

in endless

summer

air.


	22. Chapter 22

Darkness.

Then, a jolt.

Falling back awake.

Misato Katsuragi opened her eyes and tried immediately to sit up. She didn't know where she was or what had happened, but that lack of knowledge was overpowered by the pressing need to _do_.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." The voice was accompanied by hands pressing her chest and shoulders, trying to keep her down.

"She's awake." Another voice, on her left. The light in the room was bright, streaming in through the window.

"Where am I?" she demanded.

"Third cranial," said the left-hand voice, by way of answer. Teal uniform. A nurse. "Get the doctor."

"Ma'am," said the right-hand voice. Another nurse. As she left, the pressure on Misato's chest went with her.

Misato sat up again. "What happened?"

"I don't really know, ma'am," said the nurse. "You really shouldn't be moving—"

Misato made a snorting noise and hoped it was dismissive-sounding enough to get her point across. She swung her legs out of the bed and set them on the floor. One of her legs was bandaged tightly, especially around her ankle. She felt the cold tile on her exposed toes and tried to stand.

She failed, and ended up on the floor. Pain clarified her predicament: broken ankle, broken foot. She tried to steady herself with her elbow. More pain, blossoming through her arm and into her chest. She yelped and rolled onto her back, clutching her arm and chest.

Broken arm, bruised ribs. Phenomenal.

When the doctor entered, Kaji in tow, it was to the sight of Operations Manager Katsuragi writhing on the ground, her exasperated nurse trying to help her, to no avail.

The doctor tried to help, and got a withering "back off" for his trouble. Kaji stood back and let the situation proceed.

Misato used her good arm and leg to right herself and push her way up against the bed. From her upright position, she pointed to the doctor and nurse. "Both of you, get out."

"Major, you have a concussion—"

"I'm aware of that," she said. "I'll be sure not to drive or use any screens. Please leave."

They left. The doctor looked at Kaji as he went. Kaji shrugged, communicating something between an apology and an 'I told you so'. How long had she been out, and how long had Kaji been here, waiting for her to wake up?

The door swished closed. Misato covered her eyes, trying to blot out the light from outside.

Kaji crossed to the windows and polarized them with the touch of a button, the glass tinting itself. The light went away.

Misato struggled up on one foot long enough to land herself on the bed. Kaji helped her half the distance, and she allowed it. When she had regained her breath, she looked at him.

"How long?" she said.

"Two days," he said. "How much do you remember?"

She tried to swallow, but her mouth had no spit. "Is there water here?"

Kaji grabbed a bottle from a bedside table and handed it over. She sipped and swished the cold liquid around, realizing how gross the inside of her mouth had become. She needed a toothbrush, a shower, and some damn answers.

"I remember the test going sideways," she said. "The synchronization flowed backwards, and the blood pattern went… blue. Was Unit 03 an Angel?"

"Our best guess is that it attached itself parasitically, via the entry shaft."

Misato sipped again, swallowed. She felt pathetic laying here. "Is it dead?" she asked.

Kaji nodded. "Unit 01 sortied against it."

"Shinji killed it," she said.

"Yes."

Despite the blanket and the sweat of her overheating body, Misato felt suddenly cold. "How did it happen?" she said.

((()))

Section-2 agents grabbed Shinji and Rei from school the second the Matsushiro explosion was detected, but they hadn't grabbed her. It had fallen to Kaji to drive her into headquarters himself. Her last sight of Shinji had been his face as he was loaded into a Section-2 sedan. He had smiled at her across the parking lot—confident. Despite her frustrations, she had waved at him, something that surprised even her. Since when did she wave to boys?

For the last hour, she had waited, suited up, standing on the umbilical bridge of Unit 02's cage, hoping for the order to sortie. But the order never came. Unit 02 was still in stasis, and without a direct command override by Commander Ikari, it would stay that way.

And no override was coming.

Kaji came to get her when the battle was about to be joined, and they rode to the command center together. She ran ahead, beating him into the command center, but she stopped at the side of the main command bridge. The entire chamber radiated a sense of urgent and immense tension which brought her to an involuntary halt. The holographic topography displayed before the tower was altered, its peaks and valleys not that of the wider Hakone Bay, but of something farther off—the base of Mt. Matsushiro's southern slope and the suburban sprawl which crowned it.

'Operational Zone Alpha', as the hologram named it.

On the screen beyond, footage from a dozen and more sources spliced and revolved. Satellite imagery, aerial surveillance from observation helicopters and AWACS-equipped VTOL craft, the gun cameras of UN armored elements, and helmet cams from the associated JSDF troops all combined in a kaleidoscope of visual data. All of it showed the same sight: an amber-lit evening landscape, broken by the sight of three titans, like gravestones on the horizon.

Unit 01, in the rearguard position. Unit 00, ranging forward, pallet rifle equipped, prepared to intercept the target, and the target itself, a blackened Evangelion moving at pace towards Unit 00's position. A close-up of the black unit's body was overlayed with cyber-biographical particulars. Blood type blue. Angel confirmed.

"Unit 03," Asuka said. "Is Unit 03 the target?"

Kaji stepped up behind her. "They think it's been taken over."

"Taken over? What's that even mean?"

Kaji shrugged, as much to say he didn't know.

"Attempt direct override of the plug ejection circuits." Commander Ikari's voice cut through the chatter from the lower levels and the quick cross-talk of the senior technicians, brooking no argument. Asuka looked up at him for the first time. He loomed over the proceedings, calm.

"The override is being accepted, but the plug won't eject." Lieutenant Ibuki looked to Hyuga. "Is it blocked?"

Hyuga shook his head. "Hard to tell. We can't get anything in behind it to see. JSDF won't range that close, and our overhead elements don't have the definition for it."

"Emergency teams are responding to the Matsushiro site now." Aoba was juggling multiple headsets, coordinating those selfsame emergency teams. "Heavy damage. I'll keep us posted."

Asuka had never been in the command center during a combat operation before. The amount of work it took to coordinate an Evangelion strike was truly immense. In the face of it, she felt as though she were just the tip of a spear, driven on by a towering haft composed of these hundreds of technicians, advisors, and millions of dollars of technology. She wished Shinji could see it as she now did. Maybe then he would understand that he wasn't alone out there. Maybe then he wouldn't hate it so much.

"Unit 00 is within engagement range," said Hyuga.

"Understood." Ikari's voice was ice, even as he pitched it up to speak to Ayanami directly. "Rei, it is up to you. Maintain your distance, and take it down."

"Confirmed."

Asuka turned to Kaji. "There's still a plug inside it."

Kaji inclined his head, his lips set.

"They can't do that." Asuka turned to object, to say something, but Kaji stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

"It's too late," he said.

Asuka turned and watched as Unit 00 engaged the target.

((()))

Rei Ayanami knew before her copilots. She knew before anyone had told her. She knew the moment she laid eyes on the Fourth Child two days previously. What had given it away? Was it his eyes, or something in her bond to these beings which made it clear? Or had she just grown so accustomed to looks from Toji Suzuhara that they had formed a bond all their own, unspoken even to each other?

Toji. Kensuke's friend. Fourth Child.

Her targeting reticule hovered over Unit 03's back, angled to send a stream of fire into its dorsal plating. The second she unfurled her AT field, it would be exposed. The plates themselves could take the brunt of the damage. If she was correct, the barrage would simply serve to take the hostile unit off balance, just long enough for her to close the distance and engage it up close. Any more firepower from range would risk damaging the entry plug, and hurting the pilot.

"Rei, it is up to you. Maintain your distance, and take it down."

"Confirmed." The acknowledgement left her lips before she could consider it. Maintain her distance? Then she would have to fire continuously, to suppress and neutralize, to kill.

There was no guarantee, then, that she could keep the pilot safe. Her targeting reticule blinked steadily, its crosshairs centered on that entry plug.

She thought of Toji Suzuhara. His voice loud at lunchtime, earning laughs from classmates, and the pain in his face when he realized they were laughing at his expense. His feet up on the desk. His shrug when Kensuke talked to him. His eyes meeting hers from across the classroom—a good friend she'd never spoken to.

A kind person. Kensuke's friend. Fourth Child.

Her finger rested on the trigger, but didn't squeeze. She hesitated.

And in her hesitation, the corrupted Unit struck.

((()))

Unit 03 caught Ayanami off guard. When it landed on her, the impact jarred half the near-vicinity visual feeds. One of them went offline entirely as debris from a sundered roadway came crashing down atop it. Someone below, one of the secondary techs, barked an order and that feed switched off.

Asuka could only see the combat in quick bursts. Unit 00's visual feed was garbled by AT interference. Audio to the plug heard Ayanami grunting, fighting back, almost muffled into silence by the overwhelming clamor of impacts raining against her Eva's superstructure.

Asuka stared at the input, hearing Ayanami struggle for her life, and catching glimpses of her desperate battle as blips of video. A blue elbow colliding with a black faceplate. Black fingers ripping up blue plating. Unit 00's faceplate appearing for a second as its head was slammed into a home, the mono-lens in its face already shattered.

Asuka was only just aware of her jaw clenching, her fists balling, and her legs locking. Part of her wanted to be out there, wanted to be the one scrabbling for dear life, punching and smashing.

And all the while, the techs were calling out information, calmly describing the encroaching loss of Unit 00.

"Severe damage to the cranial structure."

"The head case is cracked. Synchronization dropping."

On screen, Unit 03 lifted Unit 00 into the air, one palm grasping its wrecked head. The steel of Ayanami's helmet was warping, contorting, both from the pressure of its grip and from something else, something unnatural.

"Warping in the cranial structure and underlying biology. Maya, you seeing this?"

"It resembles what data I'm getting from Unit 03." Ibuki turned in her seat. "I think the Angel is trying to infect Unit 00, sir."

Commander Ikari did not hesitate. "Engage the neckline explosive bolts. Sever the unit's head."

"Sir, the pilot's synchronization circuits are still active," Ibuki said.

"I said, sever it."

"Yes, sir."

"What the hell?" Asuka shouted, stepping forward. "You can't just—"

Kaji stopped her again, pulling her back. "Not now, Asuka."

"They're going to cut her head off!" Asuka said. "She's still synched! She'll feel it!"

"This isn't the time," Kaji began.

Commander Ikari looked down at them. "Inspector, if the Second Child is going to be a problem, I'd suggest you remove her from the situation."

"No problem, sir," Kaji replied. He looked at Asuka, trying to calm her.

She ignored him. No one else on the command team questioned the order, no one protested beyond Ibuki's clinical objection.

"Disabling the head," Hyuga reported, and clicked a key on his console.

On the screen, Unit 00's neckline detonated with a series of fizzing thermite pops. The body fell loose instantly, slumping to the ground. The impact jarred every visual feed in the valley.

Ayanami's scream washed over the command center, a ragged cry that sent the overhead speakers warbling. Asuka recoiled from it on instinct, her hand touching her own throat.

And no one else cared. The techs continued typing, reporting to one another.

"Synaptic network is offline. Unit 00 is cold."

"Pilot's life signs are erratic."

"She's in shock. Her body is seizing."

"Beginning plugsuit stabilization."

Asuka's frown deepened, flinching in the face of her own idiocy. This wasn't a helpful, team effort. She wasn't the tip of the spear. This was an organization of emotionless adults who couldn't care less about what was happening to Rei Ayanami.

Shinji was right to feel alone out there, she realized.

"Target is on the move again, headed south."

"Projection indicates the target will intercept Unit 01 in sixty seconds."

On the screen, Unit 03 tossed the severed head of its victim aside and walked away, its footfalls thudding it closer to the only pilot left to stop it.

"There's a kid in there," Asuka said. When Kaji didn't respond, she turned and looked at him. "Who is it?"

He took a breath, and then he told her.

((()))

The sun was low over the mountains, its rays kissing the flat bottom valley which rested at the base of Mt. Matsushiro's southern slope and washing the shuttered windows of the houses with amber light. The streets were vacant, cicadas buzzed, and a rhythmic thud shook the ground—the tread of an oncoming giant. With each step, its shadow grew across pavement and power lines, parked cars and playgrounds. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Shinji gripped his control yokes. His feed to Unit 00 was static. The voices over his communications link were calm, detached, as if everything was fine. Unit 00 was cold, that's all. No word on Rei. Nothing to worry about, no pilot injured or possibly dead. No devastation of the surrounding buildings, no death toll of bystanders. Just Unit 00—which was cold.

His view of the oncoming target was clear. A blackened silhouette before the setting sun. A mirrored shadow of his own Unit.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

"The pilot is still inside, isn't he?" he said, not caring if it was aloud or not. He blink-clicked the image, magnifying it till all he saw was the target's face—heavy black armor around white-hot eyes.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

"Another kid," he said, "just like me."

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The pallet rifle was firm in his grip. He positioned the targeting reticule in the center, directly over Unit 03's head. His finger hovered over the switch, and with a wash of cold like ice in his veins, he realized he couldn't bring himself to pull it.

With a roar from a nightmare, the target leapt forward. It was on him before he could fire, its legs colliding with his chestplate and sending him reeling. He lost balance and came crashing down, his body sheering through close-packed residential streets. He moved his arm to sit up and caved in a two-story home.

His lens magnified on the target's entry plug. Still engaged.

"Damnit," he said, and reached for his rifle. He stood again.

Unit 03's arms flashed out, lengthening unnaturally. He felt it connect with his throat, the pressure of its massive fingers digging into the flex-armor around the joint. He gagged, and in his sudden panic, he dropped the rifle.

Unit 03 forced him to the ground, back colliding with a low slope. Shinji fought back, grabbing the possessed Eva's wrists, trying to pull it free. Its eyes were above him, filling his view with white-hot hate. His grip was tight, but he couldn't do more than slacken its grip slightly, at least enough to breathe. What could he do if he broke its grip, anyway? Anything he did would risk hurting the pilot.

I can't do that, he realized.

((()))

Asuka twisted in place, trying through force of will to make Unit 01 do what she would do, to twist the other unit off balance. Throw it off, get some space.

Above her, Commander Ikari spoke. "Shinji, why aren't you fighting?"

"I can't." His voice over the comms was small, unintrusive. "I can't kill another person."

"It's him or you," Ikari said.

Asuka looked up at the commander. But that wasn't true. It wasn't that simple.

"I can't do it!" Shinji shouted.

"You'll die if you don't."

"Then I'd rather die!"

Ikari slammed his fists on his desk and stood, barking orders to the techs. "Shut down all of Unit 01's synchronization circuits. Transfer direct control of the unit to the dummy plug system."

Ibuki wheeled in her seat, expressing her objections. Asuka turned to Kaji.

"What is that?" she asked.

"It's a system that will pilot the Eva for Shinji," Kaji said. "It overrides the pilot's control. Akagi has been working on it for months."

Asuka blinked. "That's a real thing?"

"Yes," Kaji said. He looked at the screen. "It hasn't been tested, but if it works, at least Shinji won't have any blood on his hands."

Yeah, as if you know him at all, Asuka did not say. Kaji hadn't been on the receiving end of a million of Shinji's apologies for things he didn't even do. She looked at the screens, listened to Ibuki's objections and the commander's refusals, and realized that if they went through with this, and Toji Suzuhara died, Shinji would never forgive himself.

She tried to imagine her Eva taken from her. Even just having it locked away was intolerable, but to have it ripped from her control while she was already within the cockpit? To have to sit there and watch it move without her command, see it fight without her input? It would be a violation.

She couldn't let this happen.

"Yes, sir," Ibuki said, turning back to her console. She reached for her keyboard, but she was suddenly pushed aside.

Asuka grabbed the lieutenant's headset where it sat on her desktop and threw it on. "Shinji! Shinji, they're going to take it from you! They're going to make it kill him without you!"

"Asuka?" his voice was distant, as if through a tunnel.

"Inspector," Commander Ikari shouted. "Remove this child from my command deck."

"Sir," Kaji said.

Asuka kept going. "They have something that will take the Eva from you and make it fight back. You have to fight back! If you don't, they'll kill it anyway, or I'll have to do it. Don't let them take this from you! Make your decision! Don't let them—"

Kaji knocked the headset from her hands. "What are you doing?" he said.

Asuka locked eyes with him. "What you people wouldn't."

"Let her speak." The voice was Commander Ikari's, from his perch. He was still standing, looking down at them, his eyes invisible behind the glare of his glasses.

Kaji stood back, relenting, and Asuka picked up the headset again.

"Shinji, I'm here," she said. "You need to do this right now. Do it or they're going to take it from you."

"There's another kid in there." His voice was strained, choking.

"Target's gain is increasing," said Lieutenant Aoba. "If he's going to fight back, he needs to do it now."

At his words, Ibuki moved to her console again, keying in the commands for this dummy system thing.

Asuka felt panic rising in her chest, a shortness of breath and a shakiness in her hands that she was not accustomed to. They would go through with it anyway. Shinji would lose control of his Eva, maybe forever. It was now or never.

She tried to find something true to make him fight, but there was nothing.

So she lied instead.

"The pilot is already dead," she said.

"What?"

"We have plug telemetry again. He's dead already. The Angel absorbed him. He's gone. There's nothing left to hurt except that thing."

Asuka took a deep breath, and turned away from everyone, from the sudden looks of the bridge techs, to Kaji's scowl, to the commander's cold stare, so that it was just her and the headset in her hand, pressed to her ear. Just her and the distant sound of strained breathing from the only voice she cared about.

"You need to kill it now, or it will come here. It won't stop until we're all dead. It won't stop until it kills me, too."

Shinji was silent. Behind her, on the screen, Unit 01 began to fight back

((()))

Shinji wrapped his hands around Unit 03's wrists and pushed, articulating the cold musculature of his arms and the interlocked segments of his tapered core to push, first slackening its grip, then standing up, forcing the possessed Eva back. The thing's mouth was open, but it didn't roar, didn't make any noise. A silent killer.

It already killed that poor kid inside it. It would kill him if he let it. It would kill Asuka, too.

He felt the tension in his grip and tugged, throwing the enemy off balance, tipping it sideways. For a moment, he had freedom, and he rolled aside. His thighs and side crushed through a street and he slewed to a stop, his free right hand finding his discarded rifle. He whipped it into place. Target, center. Switch, pulled.

A noise like thunder. Rounds crashed into Unit 03, hammering it backwards, smoke and shrapnel fuming from its wrecked superstructure. A torrent of mega-shells poured from the rifle's slamming breach, comically out of scale with the human homes they landed upon, until the breach was dry.

Unit 03 lunged forward again. Shredded plates of armor sloughed from its bulk like black snow avalanching down a mountain. The flesh beneath was pallid, sickly, and shot through with blue-purple streaks. The infection.

Shinji tossed his rifle aside and reared up, powering into the enemy as it came at him, burying his shoulder in its stomach. The collision was monumental. Shinji was thrown forward in his seat, the kinetic restraint across his lap cinching tight to hold him in place. He kicked forward, the heels of his larger body slewing up pavement and topsoil as he pushed the enemy back.

The target's hands scrabbled across his back, pulling away plates of armor in huge tears. Shinji felt pain blister between his shoulder blades as the creature's fingers dug grooves into his spine. Then a blurt of static, a shift of his HUD, and he realized that the thing had ripped his umbilical cable free.

Two minutes of reserve power left to him.

No kid should have to die in an Evangelion. It wasn't fair. They dragged some kid, like him, into this stupid life and put him in the seat only for him to be killed by an Angel. It was senseless. Stupid and senseless.

Shinji shouted, wordless, and elbowed the creature away from him, just enough to make room for him to reach across his body. With a flip of his thumb, he disengaged the safety on his left shoulder pylon, and deployed his progressive knife. The hilt fit in his hand and he pulled the weapon free, its blade vibrating to speed.

He buried the knife in Unit 03's chest, sawing across and down, ripping through the streaks of infection and steel and pale flesh. Oil and cold blood rushed across his fingers and forearm.

Unit 03 reached for him again, and he caught one of its hands in his own, holding it back. He removed the knife and plunged it down again, sinking it into the possessed Eva's shoulder joint. He sawed at the joint, the knife's edge hungering through the dead flesh, its blade's keening wail echoing through the amber evening.

Now the creature roared. In pain? Did it feel pain?

Shinji imagined dying in an entry plug, choking to death as a thing that should not be coiled throughout the Evangelion around him. He imagined that, and realized that he did not care if this false Eva felt pain or not. He grunted, pulled the knife free again, and let Unit 03's severed arm drop to the valley floor.

The enemy backed away, head low, and swung up with its last arm. A defensive strike, a last-ditch effort.

Shinji batted it aside and closed the distance, slamming the knife into its neck, stifling its roar. He chopped laterally, and half the tendons in the Eva's neck came loose in a violet-red slurry.

One minute left.

Unit 01 tipped its target over and landed atop it, the two titans crashing into the swell of a river. Shinji raised his hands and slammed the knife down again and again, chopping and slashing, seeing in the arterial sprays and fleeting defensive blows of his victim a distant memory of that first sortie, when he had been subsumed into this machine around him, had watched and felt as its anger cut that first Angel to pieces.

It had taken him time to remember that first sortie. It came to him in the night after, a sudden recalling.

He wouldn't forget this.

Unit 03's arm came up again, attempting to ward off a blow. Shinji stabbed through its palm and powered his knife down into its face, the blade sliding through cranial plating and the braincase and powering out again as he ripped it free, emptying Unit 03's head through a gash torn from temple to brainstem. His blade birthed steam where it kissed the rushing river.

Thirty seconds.

The target was barely moving, but he didn't stop. The blade rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell, sending a booming cacophony like that of a psychopathic anvil across the valley. Blood spewed skyward. The river churned with the fleeting struggle of the butchered Evangelion, its waters turning a rainbow bracken with the sudden onrush of synthetic fluids.

Shinji kept hacking. He stabbed at its head and chest, each thrust opening a new mouth or eye socket. Its head was barely attached, and with the last ounce of his reserve power, Shinji ensured that it wasn't. His fingers hooked under the wound and pulled, ripping the deformed lump that remained of Unit 03's head free from its shoulders.

Then his screens went black, his nerve connections blanked, and he was alone again in his own body, and swathed in darkness, where no one could see him curl up in the seat, nor hear his screams turn to sobs.

((()))

Unit 01 slumped to one side, thudding into the river alongside its battered victim. Water rushed over the banks, and the SSDF soldier filming the conflict backed away from the railing, sending the footage bouncing wildly. Another angle, uplinked from an observation VTOL, showed the two Evas lying next to each other in the river, their long forms like dams in the water flow.

"Unit 03 is cold," reported Lieutenant Hyuga. "Target is down."

"No shit," said Lieutenant Aoba, under his breath.

"Deploying backup power to Unit 01," said Ibuki. She turned and looked past Asuka, to the commander's platform. "The cable crane should have it back online in fifteen or twenty."

Commander Ikari gave no indication that he had heard the report, or that, if he had, any part of him cared. "Inspector, I leave this clean up in your hands. Prioritize the recovery of Unit 00's pilot, and then ensure the Matsushiro teams are taken care of."

"So now you give a crap about Unit 00," Asuka muttered. After he nearly killed her, he decides to give Ayanami the proper support.

"Yes, sir," Kaji replied, though the commander was already on his way out. Kaji turned to the techs around him. "Get aerial recovery to Units 00 and 01, and get a recovery crew to Unit 03. Cut that kid out of there if you have to."

Asuka watched the screen as the recovery commenced. Massive utility movers crunched through the debris of the battle. Unit 00's head was recovered first, hauled onto an industrial transport flatbed. Separate cordons were erected around 00's crash site and the impact craters created by Units 01 and 03. Civilians were already moving out of their shetlers and cellars, and soon interested eyes looked upon the recovery operation, kept at bay only by the threats of soldiers and the natural fears inspired by the sight of the Evangelions.

About thirty minutes into the recovery, Rei was cut loose from her Eva. Asuka saw her stumble down from the entry plug. The technicians and soldiers around her helped her down, hands on her shoulders and arms. The First Child's eyes were glazed, distant. Asuka tried to imagine what it would be like to feel your own decapitation and then live past it.

Rei was loaded into a priority VTOL, which then lifted off into the darkening sky.

The sun was gone by the time Unit 01 was repowered. A crane arm reached out, connecting another umbilical cable to its dorsal socket. The moment it was connected, the Eva stiffened, its muscles pulling it upright, into a kneeling crouch.

"Do we have audio to the Unit 01 plug?" Kaji asked.

"Yes, sir," Hyuga replied.

Kaji tapped the headset he was wearing. "Route communications to Unit 01 to me, directly."

"Done."

"Shinji?" Kaji spoke. Asuka watched him, trying not to seem eager. "You're okay, kid. I'm gonna put someone on who wants to talk to you."

Kaji pulled his headset off and offered it to Asuka, his expression communicating as much of an apology as he could.

She took the set without comment. It was warm against her ear. "Shinji," she said.

"Hey," was his response, his voice a tiny warble.

"Are you okay?" she said.

"I don't know." On the screen, Unit 01 turned its head, looking at the body of Unit 03. Recovery workers in rafts and on the shores in cranes worked to cut it apart and move it away. Sprays of sparks from heavy cutters lit up the waters and reflected across Unit 01's armor. "It's dead, right?"

"Yes," she said.

A cluster of rafts worked around the exposed entry plug, cutting and pulling it free from the ossified membrane the dead Angel had cocooned it with. Half the plug was warped, its structure caved in from one of the dozen impacts delivered to Unit 03 at the hands of Unit 01.

"Why are they cutting the plug out?" Shinji said.

"Hardline connection to the plug established," said Ibuki. "Life signs are erratic, but present."

A medical team was on standby in a separate raft, and an ambulance and life flight VTOL were perched on the river bank, closer than any other response vehicles.

"I thought…" Shinji's voice trailed off.

"Shinji, listen," Asuka began, struggling to think of the right words. "I didn't… I don't know how to…"

The plug came open with a rush of cold LCL, and the cutting stopped. Hands rummaged into the plug, and hauled the pilot out by his arms. His right arm was bend backwards at the elbow and tucked under his back. That side of his face drooped. Blood trickled from his hairline, and his eye socket was crushed.

Asuka could barely believe that was Toji Suzuhara.

"Shinji—" she said, but the voice in her ear was gone. The communications line was severed.

She peeled the headset off and handed it back to Kaji. He looked at her again, and she realized that what she had mistaken for an apology was actually something far worse: pity.

Asuka could not meet his eyes. She watched the rest of the recovery operation in silence.


	23. Chapter 23

Unit 01 was air-vacced from the battlefield at 2200 hours. It took an hour to fly it back to Tokyo-3, then another thirty minutes to recall it through geofront lift terminals and reset it within the cage. The Unit was standby-active for the entire journey, fed by backup power from the airlift and then again by the transport sked which conveyed it within headquarters. Despite repeated hails from the command center, its pilot remained silent. Visual feed to the entry plug was rejected, and though a command override could turn the cameras on, it was decided that the pilot's dignity should take priority.

Funny, Asuka reflected, that they should give a damn about his dignity now, after everything.

Standing on the umbilical bridge, she watched the restraining bolts screw into place, heard the whoosh of stasis oil echo from the chasm beneath her feet, and waited for the telltale release of the entry plug. Unit 01 stared down at her, the lit panes of its eyes unblinking. Unfeeling. She pictured Shinji behind those eyes, watching her on his magnification screens. That image made it hard to hold the Eva's gaze, but hold it she did.

She held it a long time.

Finally, the eyes dimmed. The plug released. The Unit slackened, almost imperceptibly, as its titanic musculature lost cohesion with a controlling mind—a puppet with its strings severed.

Shinji climbed down to the bridge and stood in front of her, saying nothing.

"I…" Asuka said, failing to find the words. She stepped forward, reaching for his arm. "They were going to use this thing, this dummy system. It would've taken away the Eva from you. It would have done it anyway."

Shinji's eyes were welling with tears. Asuka made to wrap her arms around him, to pull him in, to put everything back in its proper place.

"Or I would've had to do it. There was no other way—"

"I thought about you on the flight back. After I saw Toji, I didn't think I'd ever get him out of my mind, but somehow I thought about you. I thought about us together. I thought about our tandem training, and the thing with the volcano."

His voice was dry. She knew why—his throat ached from sudden exposure to real air after hours spent in the plug. Asuka put her chin on his shoulder, hugging him. He let her do it.

"Then I started thinking," he continued, "about how much of our friendship is based around these things. The Evas. Ayanami calls it our bond. I've wanted to run away from this place so many times, but I kept staying here because of the two of you. Everyone else lies and cheats—even Misato—but the two of you were honest. That kept me around. Recently, it's just been you."

He pushed her to arm's length. There was no anger in his eyes.

"Did you know it was him?" he said.

"I didn't know until tonight," she said.

"But you knew before you got on the comm."

Asuka suddenly wished he was still in the Eva. When she spoke, it was around a growing lump in her throat.

"Yeah," she said.

"Did you know he was alive?"

"Shinji, they would have killed him anyway."

"But you knew he was alive," he said. "And you told me he was dead."

"Yes," she said. She saw his face fall and rushed to fill the void with more words, more truths. It didn't matter if she'd said them before or barely believed them herself. She needed something, more of anything to keep him from focusing on the lie, from realizing she had betrayed him like everyone else. Anything to keep him from leaving her. "Ayanami couldn't do it, and my Eva is in stasis. They wouldn't let me go out there. They had this dummy system. They were going to take the Eva away from you."

"You still don't get it."

"I do." Her hands pressed his shoulders, gripping them, trying to hold on.

"No, you don't." His hands touched hers, pulling them away. "I don't care if they take the Eva from me."

"If they did, it might've killed him."

"But they didn't. It didn't." Shinji pointed a thumb at his chest. His tears were welling, now. " _I did_. I nearly killed him. And I did it because you told me to. You lied to me."

"I tried to help you," she said.

"How did any of this help me?" Shinji took his nerve connector band off, gripping it in one hand. He pointed at Unit 01's looming faceplate. "I don't love this like you do! I hate it. I've always hated it."

"Don't go," she said.

"Give me a reason to stay."

To her own surprise, she did not hesitate. "Because I need you."

Shinji's jaw clenched, biting back some instinct before it could surface. Clamping it down. When he spoke, there were no tears in his voice.

"I'm sorry, Asuka," he said. "But I'll never pilot this thing again."

He passed her without a glance. She heard his connector band ting against the deck plate, then a splash as it landed in the stasis oil beneath the bridge, then the swish of the door as he left, and she was again alone in the cage, held in place by the glare of Unit 01.

Above, in the observation booth, Kaji frowned. He flicked off the audio pickups to the cage proper and turned to leave. "God, do I hate being right all the time," he muttered.

((()))

Misato took another gulp of tasteless water and leaned back, closing her eyes. She tried to imagine the battle in her head, the wreckage strewn across suburban Japan, the pain her kids had gone through to bring it to a close.

Her kids. How long had she thought of them like that? She could hear Ritsuko's scolding even now.

"Did he…" she began, then tried again. "The Unit 03 pilot. Is Suzuhara okay?"

"He's alive," Kaji said. "But barely. Most of the right side of his body was crushed when the plug caved in. The doctors don't think he'll recover vision in that eye. He'll be lucky to walk again, too."

Misato sighed. "Does Shinji know?"

"Not the specifics, no." Kaji took a breath. "But he did see the kid get pulled from the plug."

"That's actually worse."

"Yeah."

Misato put her hands to her face. Kaji placed his hand on her leg. She let him do it, his touch stifling whatever tears were at risk of breaking free.

Her kids. Her poor kids.

A single whimper escaped her lips, and that was all. It was all she would allow herself to have. When it was done, she slid her hands away, pulling down her face, as though wiping away whatever weakness she had just felt.

"I have to talk to Shinji," she said.

"I don't think that's a good idea right now."

"Why not?"

Misato looked at Kaji, and realized for the first time that he was in full uniform. His hand left her leg, taking with it her friend, and leaving in his place Chief Inspector Ryoji Kaji.

"I have some questions I need to ask you about what happened at Matsushiro," he said.

Misato folded her arms. "Ask away."

((()))

"Get down!" Misato shouted, hauling Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki off his feet and to the floor. Fuyutsuki hit the ground with a grunt, the wind knocked out of him. She landed next to him, and their eyes locked. He spoke.

"We need to—"

Then with sudden brightness and incredible sound, the world was whiplashed into darkness.

Time passed. Pain smothered her waking mind and infected her unconsciousness, causing hallucinogenic movement in the rubble of her mind. She thought she smelled her father, felt the tickle of his beard on her cheek, like when he used to hold her. Daddy, she tried to say. He was bathing her. Warm, thick water lapped at her sides and hands, like she was being dipped in tar.

Daddy, I don't know where—

She blinked awake. Frayed copper wiring scratched against her face. Sparks blew from a damaged control console nearby. Most of the mobile command center was crushed, its walls and ceiling bowed inward. A technician lay nearby, his torso cored by a falling stanchion, his tan uniform soaked through with his blood. The blood had pooled, run across the floor, and soaked her side.

Misato tried to sit up. Her arm gave out, and she screamed, falling back.

A voice reached her. "Misato! Is that you?"

"Yeah!" she managed. "Ritsuko?"

"It's me. I've got the sub-commander with me." Ritsuko's voice was shaking, on the verge of losing composure. "Can you get to us?"

Misato turned on her back, using her shoulder blades to rotate. Ritsuko's voice was coming from across a mound of rubble, itself made of cracked pavement and steel from where the command center had become one with the tarmac it was sitting on. Night leaked in through rents in the ceiling. It was already dark. How long had she been out?

Misato looked down at her arm. It was bent at a sickening angle, and she looked away from it.

"No promises," she said. "My arm is broken."

"Hang on."

There came the sound of movement, of a body scrabbling through debris, and Ritsuko's arm appeared through the rubble, hand open.

Misato grunted, lifted herself with her good arm, and caught Ritsuko's hand in her own. Her old friend pulled her upright, the exertion causing a new bloom of pain in Misato's chest. But she was now vertical, leaning against the rubble, head hunched beneath the low ceiling.

Her head was swimming. It wouldn't be long before she blacked out again. She blinked rapidly, trying to keep herself awake.

Ritsuko's hair was matted by blood. Hers or one of the technicians, Misato couldn't tell. Fuyutski lay nearby. His chest was wrapped in the torn remnants of Ritsuko's lab coat.

"I need to tighten his tourniquet or he'll bleed out," Ritsuko said. "Try to hold him up."

Misato nodded and hobbled to the sub-commander's side. She knelt down and used her good arm to help Ritsuko elevate his shoulders, then push him into an almost-sitting position. It provided enough room for Ritsuko to reach around his chest, which was all they needed. When Ritsuko let go of him to tighten the tourniquet, Misato kept him propped up with her working hand and shoulder. He groaned, his voice a pained whisper. Misato knew the feeling; simply holding him up made needles bloom anew through her shoulder and chest.

"You good?" she grunted, to Ritsuko.

"Almost," Ritsuko replied.

"What's almost?"

"Almost. Like I'm working so shut up, almost."

"Please don't fight," Fuyutsuki managed to say, through gritted teeth.

"Keep quiet," Ritsuko snapped. Misato raised her eyebrows at that. She'd never heard Ritsuko be so informal with the sub-commander.

The doctor cinched his wrappings. "Done," she said, and helped Misato ease their superior back down.

Misato slumped to her side, worn out already. Her head was pounding and her vision swam, stirring the image of the shattered ceiling and the night sky beyond into a slosh of spinning color. A part of her wondered if she had a concussion. The rest of her felt like throwing up, so she did. She rolled to her side and retched. Star-wash filled her vision, then blackness.

((()))

When she was done, Kaji didn't look away. He sat next to her, perched on his stool, and watched her as she uncorked her water bottle and took another swig. She held his gaze the best she could.

"That's the last thing you remember," he said, eventually.

"Yeah," Misato said.

"You didn't wake up again after that."

"I regained consciousness a few times," she said. "But only briefly."

"Do you remember anything from those instances?"

"Only snippets." Misato rested her hands in her lap. The paper-thin fabric of her smock was rough under her fingertips. She wondered who, in a facility which cost untold trillions, had decided to skimp on the smock budget. "I think Ritsuko moved me at some point. I remember sirens. The cutting as they made their way in toward us."

She shrugged, giving up. When she looked back up at Kaji, it was with a sudden urgency. "Is Ritsuko okay?" she said.

Kaji nodded. "She was discharged yesterday. She didn't sustain any major injuries."

"Thank God," Misato said. "What about Fuyutsuki?"

"The sub-commander is alive. He's in an intensive recovery ward. Totally unresponsive. They aren't sure whether or not he is going to make it."

"I understand." The loss of Unit 03, the damage to Unit 00. Rei's failure. Suzuhara's injuries. The pain Shinji must be going through, and now Fuyutsuki's life hanging on by a thread. The magnitude of it all.

"I know the Angel is dead," she said, "but this doesn't feel much like a victory."

Kaji's hand returned, touching her own. His fingers were warm on her palm. "You'll get through it," he said.

"I'm glad you're confident," she said.

Kaji stood up from her bedside and, wordlessly, kissed her forehead. He squeezed her hand, then he left. Misato watched him go, then looked out the window, wondering if she would have been better off telling him the truth.

((()))

Rei was discharged from Nerv central the morning after the battle. A doctor gave her a physical, noted the results on a chart, a nurse gave her a set of clothes pulled by Section-2 from her apartment—a sweatshirt and shorts that she didn't even remember owning—and she was sent on her way. No one else had spoken with her, and no one had given her instructions. She stood in the path outside the hospital ward, looking at the GeoFront around her. Two technicians passed her, talking idly, laughing. They did not notice her.

With nothing to do, Rei went home of her own volition, holding her bundled plugsuit under one arm. She had never been given a plugsuit to take home before. In her entire life at Nerv, plugsuits were given to her when she needed one. Did she need one now, for some reason she could not see? Or did the hospital staff just not know what else to do with it?

Rei held it in her hands on the tram ride to the surface city, and wondered if she owned the plugsuit. Was it hers? She wore one often. It was sized to fit her proportions. She used it in pursuit of her most important duties. But she used Unit 00, too. Unit 00 was attuned to her mental patterns. But she wouldn't imagine that she owned the Evangelion.

When she got home, she placed the bundled plugsuit on her dresser. She looked at the little glasses case set next to the plugsuit. Were those glasses hers, as well? Or were they just on-loan from Commander Ikari? He had abandoned them after they had warped in the heat of the expelling LCL.

Rei laid down on her bed, the glasses case in her hands. She ran her fingertips along the lines of her neck, and remembered, viscerally, the sensation of tendons snapping, blood gushing, and of nerves ripping apart. She remembered what happened afterwards, too—the sudden nothingness, the absence of all, and the cold sensation of returned being once the connection was severed.

For a moment, through the bond of the Eva, she had experienced true death. The decapitation, and the void after it, yawned in her memory. She tried to focus on that void, and felt her memory slipping around its edges, failing to dive deeply into it. She could only remember experiencing it, but could not, in memory, experience it again.

Rei opened the case and held the glasses in her hands. Did ownership of an item change when the item was discarded, or was the item freed from all ownership? Were these hers, his, or did they belong to no one?

For the first time, Rei slid the glasses over her face. They were too big for her, since they were fitted for Commander Ikari's facial structure. They hurt to look through, since the lenses were attuned to Commander Ikari's visual faults. But Rei found that if she closed one eye and looked through one of the cracks, where a full piece of the lens had fallen out, she could see clearly.

((()))

The medical staff protested, but their authority was limited, and nowhere near enough to override Nerv's operations manager, so she discharged herself. A single crutch and a bottle of pain meds was enough to get her moving. She told herself that a sense of responsibility guided her steps, carried her down two levels, to the intensive care ward.

Responsibility for the failure. It had been so long now, so many victories, that a part of her grew used to it. The Magi system routinely rated her plans as impossible, hundred-to-one odds, and yet she prevailed. The project, the system, the staff around her, and the kids, all prevailed. And when they failed, the Evas themselves took over. Winning had become her business.

But now, looking in on Toji Suzuhara, she understood what it was like to lose.

The kid was hidden beneath a dense apparatus of medical equipment. His body was encased in a full recovery sheath, like a black casket. Nursing staff hovered around him, a constant hive of activity, keeping him sedated, managing pain. Surgery tools rested in antiseptic troughs at the foot of the bed. Misato watched through pane glass, her reflection overlaying this kid's rescue.

And behind her reflection: blonde hair, bandages.

"They say his arm can be repaired," Ritsuko said, stepping up alongside her. The doctor's own arm was in a sling. Half her head was bandaged, though both her eyes were visible, alert, searching. "His eye socket is crushed, and they're working to save it right now."

"The socket or the eye?" Misato said.

"Not sure." Ritsuko pulled a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket, then shook out a cigarette and lit it. "I'm surprised you're up already," she said.

"Lying there didn't feel right."

"Yeah," Ristuko said.

"Fill me in," Misato said.

Inhale. Exhale. Smoke. "Unit 03's remains are being recovered. I don't want to jinx it, but the damage to the superstructure seems repairable. We might be able to salvage it."

"Unit 00?"

"Unit 00's decapitation was a clean break. We can have it battle-ready in a month, maybe less if we push it. In the meantime, we have one operational Eva."

"Maybe two, if the commander lifts the lockdown on Unit 02," Misato said.

"Don't hold your breath."

Misato adjusted herself. Her crutch was beginning to wear on her armpit. Behind the glass, a nurse opened a hatch on Suzuhara's sheath, injecting a new IV.

"Has his father been notified?" she asked.

"We let him know what we could, but he isn't permitted inside the ward until the subject is out of surgery."

"Use his name, please." Misato's voice was low.

"Of course." Ritsuko shook out another cigarette and aimed it at Misato, as much of an apology as she could make. Misato took it.

"I haven't smoked in years," she said, accepting the lighter's flame.

"I know." Ritsuko snapped the lighter shut. She gestured through the glass. "I went ahead and filed the transfer orders. His sister is in our facility now. His father is permitted to see her, of course."

"Thank you," Misato said.

"It's the least we can do."

Through the speakers in the glass, they could hear the beeping of monitors and the rhythmic wheeze of Toji Suzuhara's assisted breathing. It went on for a long time.

"He was scared, and I told him he would be fine."

"This isn't your fault, Misato."

"Interesting. Then who is at fault?"

"No one."

"How do you figure?"

"The institutions of government and military act with a momentum that has outmoded such a concept as individual accountability."

"What the hell does that mean?" Misato raised an eyebrow. "That a commander shouldn't fret over ordering men to their deaths?"

"It means that he can fret all he wants, but it won't change his actions, and he isn't ultimately responsible. You have to fight the Angels, which means you must send these pilots into harm's way. It is morally repugnant, but necessity outweighs that repugnance."

"So I'm supposed to just toss my guilt out the window, then?"

"It might be a good idea." Ritsuko shrugged. "But I don't think you can, and I don't really want you to."

Misato eyed her friend. "Kaji talk to you?"

"Yes, he did."

"What did you tell him?"

"That you helped me set Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki's injuries, and then you blacked out. I blacked out shortly thereafter." Ritsuko held her gaze. "And what did you tell him?"

"The same thing," Misato said. "I helped you with Fuyutsuki and then I passed out. I told him I couldn't remember anything past that point."

"I see. And could you remember anything?"

Another moment passed. Misato finished her cigarette and looked for an ashtray. There was one on the opposite wall. Ritsuko took her butt and crossed to the ashtray, putting them both out. When she came back, she looked her old friend in the eye.

"We should go somewhere," Misato said.

"Yes," Ritsuko said. "I think we should."

((()))

It was mid-afternoon when her doorbell _pin-pommed_. The noise disturbed her, pulling her mind up from memory and into the present moment. The shadows on her floor were longer, though she could not recall the progress of their slow march. The doorbell made her suddenly aware of her own blinking and breathing, to the point where she wondered if she had been doing either for the past hours. She stood up and walked to the door.

Kensuke was there. "Hey," he said, by way of greeting.

"Hello," Rei said.

"I looked you up in the directory. The class directory, that is." Kensuke gestured at the address plate beside the door. "That's how I figured out where you live. I hope that's okay."

Rei thought about that, and decided it was as okay as anything. She told him as much.

"Good. Yeah, good." Kensuke gestured at her face. "You have glasses?"

Rei realized she was still wearing them. "No," she said, and took them off. She almost mentioned the glasses' former owner, but found she did not want to say. Some tightness in her chest warned her against it, telling her that voicing the truth would, in this instance, cause problems; it would cause more tightness in her chest, more pain. Is that what embarrassment was?

"Can I come in?" Kensuke said.

Rei stood aside, and he came in. She closed the door and placed the glasses on the lip of the counter in her small kitchen space. Kensuke walked deeper into the apartment.

"You live here alone?" he said.

"Yes," Rei said. "I told you I did."

"Yeah, but seeing it is different."

"How?"

"It doesn't feel like you, that's all."

Rei looked around at the room, with its bare walls, scruffy carpet, and sparse furniture. In her mind, she compared it to the Katsuragi apartment, realizing that she had very little frame of reference for what a home was supposed to be. Simultaneously, she felt, for the first time, that something was wrong with her space. That it was missing something.

Kensuke turned to her. "It's just surprising," he said, in that way she had grown accustomed to, when he was trying to fill a void. He reached for her one folding chair and turned it around before sitting in it. "Fighters were scrambled last night, and there was a full lockdown after you guys were pulled out of class. Did something go wrong with the Unit 03 test?"

Her chest felt suddenly tight. Looking at Kensuke, she tried to imagine his reaction to the news she had to tell him, but found that she could not. The situation would not unfold in her mind. It was too complicated, too unknown, for her mind to project it. Suddenly, she wished very much for the solitude of the tank or the distance of the forest and the stars above, anything to get away from this suffocating, human moment.

"What's wrong?" Kensuke said. He looked at her expectantly, but without malice. He was always curious. Rei tried to imagine him in ten years, in twenty years, in forty or sixty. She tried to give herself that distant perspective, to find comfort in it, but she could not. There was only Kensuke, fourteen years old, right in front of her.

"Rei—"

She wiped her face and looked down at her hands, at the drops of moisture on her skin. "What is wrong with me?" she said.

Kensuke managed to put a hand on her shoulder. He couldn't bring himself to do anything more.

"What is going on?" he said.

"Toji Suzuhara was the pilot," she said. One of the tears on her hand ran down her palm and dropped, falling to the carpet. The words kept coming, easier to make real now that the first had fallen. "Unit 03 was compromised by an Angel. I was ordered to destroy it."

Kensuke didn't move. "Did you?"

"No," Rei said. "I was rendered combat-ineffective."

"What does that mean?"

_A blinking reticule on the target's back. A moment of hesitation. Pain, blistering through her head, like scalpel-tendrils drilling under her skin. Explosive bolts, armor shredding like torn skin. Blackness, total and deep._

"Unit 00 was compromised. It would have been consumed. Commander Ikari ordered the Unit's head severed."

"They cut off your head?"

Rei did not respond. "Unit 03 was destroyed by Unit 01."

"Shinji did it." Kensuke's hand remained on her shoulder, but the warmth in it had gone. "Rei, is Toji okay?"

Rei looked up at him. "No."

((()))

The Alpine stopped on a shallow ridge overlooking the geofront lake. Misato put it in park and let it idle, the air blowing on low. She stretched her injured leg, feeling the bandages around her ankle constrict to counter the movement. Ritsuko sat next to her.

The drive here had been quiet. Neither woman wanted to risk speaking near HQ, but now that they were out here…

"We're clear," Misato said.

"What do you actually remember?" Ritsuko said.

"No, not a chance."

"What?"

"I'm not narrowing it down for you so you can pick and choose what you want to be honest about," Misato said. "I heard a lot. Let's just assume I heard everything and go from there."

"Misato, I'm not trying to hide anything from you—"

"Now. You're not trying to hide anything from me _now_."

"I don't know where to start." Ritsuko rested her arm on the windowsill of the passenger door and cradled her bandaged head with her hand. She closed her eyes. "I can't orient myself here. I don't know what you need to hear and in what order."

Misato stared at her, trying to decide if this was an act or not. She watched Ritsuko fiddle with her bandages, eyes closed, breaths coming in measured time, trying to calm herself. She could be faking her anxiety, but in the close confines of the car, less than a handspan away from her, Misato found it hard to see anything but real panic and confusion in her friend's behavior.

"Okay," she said. "I helped you with Fuyutsuki and then I passed out. I woke up a while later and heard you two talking."

Ritsuko didn't move. Her breaths were heavy. Misato continued.

"He told you not to 'let him get away with it,'" she said. "I'm guessing that 'him' is Commander Ikari. You kept telling him to stay quiet, but he wouldn't shut up. 'Don't let him get away with it.'"

"Is that all you heard?"

"No," Misato said. "He mentioned your mother."

The doctor's hand moved from her temple down to her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. An attempt to slice off some emotion before it could surface.

Misato pressed on, remembering the darkened, ruined control room, the smell of electrical fires, and the low voices nearby. "'Don't let him use you, too,'" she said, carrying the old man's strained words into the present.

Ritsuko nodded, eyes still closed. "I don't know how to help." The words were barely audible, choked out around the lump in her throat.

"Just tell me what I need to know," Misato said. "Tell me anything that can help me."

"I don't know where to start." Ritsuko cleared her throat. She waved at Misato, hand circling in a 'hurry up' manner. "Just ask me questions."

"About what?"

"About whatever you don't know." Ritsuko's eyes were still closed. "I just want this over with."

Misato took a breath. "Okay. What does Commander Ikari want to do?"

"He's never told me outright, but I can piece things together." Ritsuko took a deep breath. "I'll get killed for talking about this."

"No one will find out," Misato said. "Tell me."

"He wants to control the Human Instrumentality Project for his own ends."

"I don't know what that is," Misato said.

"It's the Third Impact."

"What?"

"The Human Instrumentality Project is the Third Impact." Ritsuko swiped tears away from her face and opened her eyes. "Do you have tissues or something?"

"Glove compartment," Misato said. As Ritsuko popped the drawer and rummaged, she sat back in her seat and looked out the window. A bird landed on the guardrail in front of the car, head bobbing. Beyond it, the crystalline blue of the lake. Behind her eyes, a storm of snow, the crackle of static, and wings of light. Blood on her side. A cross in her hand.

"You're sure?" she said.

Ritsuko blew her nose. "Well, he's never come out and said it, but yes."

"So how do you know?"

"Because I'm really smart. Because when he asks me to do four different things that seem totally unrelated, and I look into it deeper, I can reverse-engineer the scenario."

"Why would he want to cause Third Impact? Why does anyone want to cause Third Impact?"

"I don't know."

"Our job is to stop Third Impact."

"Yes."

"This is the most insane thing."

"I'm aware."

Misato shook her head. "Why are you telling me this now?"

Ritsuko dropped her hand to her lap, the crumpled tissue trapped in her fist. She looked at Misato. Her eyes were red. Misato wondered if she had ever seen her friend cry before, but couldn't remember a time where she had.

Ritsuko gestured through the windshield. "I grew up down here. My mother practically lived here, which meant that I practically lived here, too. The lights were never on back then. We hadn't figured out how to refract the light from above, so there wasn't a day-night cycle. Just darkness.

"That lake was a natural depression, but we had to redirect the water from an aquifer. Most of the ecosystem was transplanted by us or augmented by our efforts. The whole thing was so new and exciting. My mother spent most of her time inside. 'Cooped up like a rat,' she called it. But I didn't feel trapped. I felt free. This place, the secrets it forced on me, were a liberating force. I didn't understand kids my age. I didn't know what to do with them or how to relate, but I knew this place. I understood what my mother was trying to do. We weren't perfectly close, but we were honest about our faults.

"When I got to work with her, post-grad, I thought it was such a privilege. We were suddenly peers in a way we had never been before. She was my mother, my friend, and my co-worker, and I know she thought she doubted her ability at all three of those aspects, but she shouldn't have. She was a great person."

Misato sat and watched and did not speak.

"I was actually talking with her about you the night she died. You never met her, right?"

Misato shook her head.

"I didn't think so." Ritsuko's fist flexed and unflexed, wadding the tissue tighter, looser, tighter, looser. "I looked up to her so much. She was a great scientist and a great mother, even if she couldn't see it. If she had one flaw, it was her relationship with the Commander."

"They were…" Misato let the implication hang.

Ritsuko nodded. "After he lost his wife. I don't think he cared for her, really."

"Are we still talking about your mom, here?" Misato tried to keep her voice soft.

Ritsuko laughed, short and bitter. "It's that obvious?"

"No," Misato said. "I just know you."

"But you didn't say anything."

"I didn't think I could. Me judging you for a relationship with a man would seem pretty hypocritical."

Ritsuko chuckled again, but the bitterness had gone. Misato found herself smiling, too.

"He'll still kill me if he learns about this," Ritsuko said.

Misato shrugged. "Can't be any worse than having sex with him."

Ritsuko's chuckle became full-blown laughter. It was infectious, and Misato had to stop herself; her ribs were too bruised for it.

In the silence that followed, Misato noticed a glint in her rearview mirror. She adjusted the mirror and saw a black sedan as it pulled into the parking space directly behind them.

"Shit," she said.

"What?" Ritsuko turned in her seat.

"Blacked-out car. Lots of tint."

"How did they—"

"I don't know," Misato said. She turned the engine on. "Hang on."

But it was too late. The sedan's driver-side door was already open, its occupant dismounting. Misato saw the uniform and stopped herself, letting go of the steering wheel.

"Damnit," she said.

The agent walked across the parking lot and rapped on her window. She rolled it down, and looked at the agent's midsection.

He dropped down and came face to face with her. "Good afternoon," said Ryoji Kaji. "Out for a drive?"

"Yes, actually," Misato said.

"What can we help you with?" Ritsuko said.

Kaji reached into the car, across Misato's headspace, and popped open an overhead compartment. He reached in and pulled out a microphone, itself corded to a battery pack and transmitter. With a quick 'excuse me', he pulled it out of the car and pocketed it.

Misato stared at him, tight-lipped. "How long has that been there?" she said.

"Longer than you'd be comfortable with," he said. "And you said I was too obvious..."

Ritsuko sat forward. "What are you going to do now?"

Kaji crouched, so that he was level with the two women. He looked out over the lake and took out his earpiece, switching it off. "So," he said, "Ikari wants to end the world."

"Seems that way," Misato said.

"And we don't know why?"

"No," Ritsuko said.

"Okay." Kaji looked at them and grinned. "Let's find out."


	24. Chapter 24

She got home in the late afternoon, after dropping Ritsuko back off at headquarters. The decision had been made to not talk more until Kaji had time to speak with his contacts. Who those contacts were, or what organization they represented, was left unclear. As she made her way down the hall to her door, crutch tapping the flooring, Misato wondered if she could trust him.

Not that she worried he would betray her. No, never that. But she did worry that he could be used. That the people beyond and above him could see, in her, a golden, burnable asset. Nowhere near a martyr but not quite a dupe. A disposable person.

She opened the door to the apartment and made her way inside. She kicked her shoes off, wincing at the pain in her bad ankle. Pen-Pen greeted her in the kitchen, squawking to see her home. He moved toward her and she turned, keeping him from colliding with her injury. He rubbed her healthy leg with the side of his beak.

"Hey, pal," she said. Reaching down to pet him sent pain through her ribs, but she persisted until he was satisfied and gone. She followed the penguin into the kitchen and looked around. Dirty dishes in the sink, all the chairs pushed in; the calendar on the wall, flipped to the old month.

Glancing at it, Misato imagined the apartment as it could be, the balcony and living room sheared off so that this wall and its calendar were laid bare to the elements—the wrong month displayed in-perpetuity after Third Impact. It was a sight in the vein of those she used to have, in her younger days, when she was finally allowed to live with her mother again. Vivid, waking nightmares which pitted the charm and warmth of each new home against the hellish memory of snow ripping across blood-red skies.

The fight against the Angels had pushed all of those concerns away. With control of her own destiny, there was no reason to dwell on could-bes and maybe-wills. She had outgrown it, she told herself.

But now these new concerns, including the idea that Third Impact might not occur because of the Angels, but because of man's own idiocy…

Misato pulled the month off and tossed it away, into a newly-changed trash bag. Disposable asset? Fine. Just so long as she could win this thing. So long as Commander Ikari didn't get to end the world.

She stood in front of Shinji's door, knuckles light on the door. "You in there, kiddo?" she said.

No response. After a moment, she slid the door aside. He was gone.

She turned, hobbled to the larger door. "Asuka?" she said. Nothing. Slide. She was gone, too. Maybe it was good that the kids weren't here. She wasn't sure she had anything constructive to say, anyway.

The kitchen again. Fish in Pen-Pen's bowl. A beer on the table. The bottle of pain pills, prescription still attached. Instructions: Two per day. Do not take with alcohol.

Misato shook two pills out into her hand. She looked at the glass rack next to the sink, seven feet away.

Suzuhara hospitalized. Fuyutsuki on his deathbed. Asuka in shambles. Shinji running away again, and Commander Ikari looking to cause Third Impact.

She looked at the beer in front of her. "Yeah, sure," she told the instructions, and cracked the beer.

((()))

She left headquarters after Unit-01 was loaded into the cage. The decision to not go home was easy; she made it immediately, a rock-solid certainty that she would not set foot in the apartment until she felt ready to do so. When exactly that would be, she had no idea. As long as it took to feel better, or to find someone to blame this on, whichever came first.

As she walked, she kept her hands in the pockets of her Nerv utility jacket and her eyes on the ground, watching the toes of her shoes snatch pebbles and twigs, old wrappers and crumpled cans.

Kaji was a good candidate to take the blame. At least, he was the first name she came to, the first face to glance her thoughts. He intervened during the combat. Tried to stop her. And then after, when the damage was done, he was the first to look at her in judgement.

He would have been perfect to blame if he hadn't been so right.

She let her legs carry her through the city, down random alleys and past places she had never seen except from behind the window of a car or the lenses of her Eva. She saw the people of the city as they sat in windowsills, walked their dogs, bought their groceries, and talked on their phones.

She spent the first night in a park, laying on a bench. Sleep came hard, but that was no obstacle. She stared at the treetops and beyond them to what snatches of starlight the city's lights did not blot to nothing.

Maybe Misato was to blame. If she had been honest beforehand, and told them that stupid Toji Suzuhara was the pilot, then this would not have happened. She rotated that idea in her mind, holding it to scrutiny. No weight to it. Even knowing it was Toji earlier, would she have done anything differently? He still would have been taken over. His Eva still would need to be put down. Unit 02 would still have been in stasis. The same thing would have happened.

The next morning, she continued. A delivery van unloading behind a freight warehouse. A couple fighting, heard through an open window. Kids in a playground, the chain-cling of swings framing their giggles. Footsteps streaming from the open maws of bus stops and train stations, faces down, faces up, and none of them familiar.

_"When I first got here, Misato drove me outside the city, up onto a hill." He turned and pointed, indicating the direction of the spot despite it being too far to see. "She showed me the city, and we watched it grow. She told me that this was my home, and that I'd saved everyone in it. So, since then I've always thought about them. The people around us, I mean. It's hard to keep them in mind when we're fighting—they're all tucked away in bunkers and basements and all. But when we're down here, walking around? You can see them all."_

_He looked away for a moment._

_"That probably sounds really stupid."_

At noon, she stepped into a corner store. Her stomach carried her to the junk food aisle, and she crouched, rummaging through packaged candies and chips. She heard the clerk behind the counter talking with a friend.

"Did you hear about that explosion up north?"

"Yeah, something about it on the news. Crazy."

"Think it was any of that giant machine stuff?"

"Probably. Can't trust anything anymore."

"Yeah, I hear that. We're thinking about leaving. The wife has family in Okinawa, and they'll put us up for a while. I don't want to stay around if this kind of thing gets to be regular."

"I think it's been regular for a long time."

"True enough."

Asuka stood up with two bags of chips, a soda, and an extra-large candy bar. She stepped up to the counter and set it all down.

"You alright, kid?" the clerk asked, ringing her up.

"I'm fine," she said. The clerk's eyebrow shot up, like everyone's did when they first heard her accent. She caught a look at herself in the mirror behind the counter, and saw how bad her hair had become overnight. She looked terrible.

She paid and left as soon as she could.

New candidate for blame, she realized, as she walked and ate. The entirety of Tokyo-3. For that matter, the entirety of the rest of humanity—a species so monumentally stupid and weak that they needed children to protect them. A species which let one of its defenders lie to another one, and ruin her relationship, her one chance at happiness, so that it could cut and run to stupid, dumb, idiot Okinawa instead of stand up for itself.

But that wasn't fair, either. They didn't know any better. They were small people with small lives. It was only when she was close to them, and heard their words, that they became any bigger.

By late afternoon, she was on a hillside overlooking the city. Her candy and chips were long gone. The soda was still in her pocket. She popped the tab and drank it and watched the sun set on the city. Gold kissed the vertical solar panels as they twisted, tracking the waning light.

She wondered if this was the same hill that Shinji mentioned. Months ago, she would have just blamed Shinji for it all. Something in her mind wouldn't let her do that anymore. Right now, she just hoped she was in the right place, and that somehow, even separated by time, they were standing right next to one another at this guardrail, looking on the same sight.

She wanted to blame his father for putting the dummy system in Unit 01 in the first place, and causing her to take action, but that wasn't right, either. The simple fact was that one forced her to do anything. No one ever had. No one made her pilot her Eva, no one made her come to Tokyo-3, no one made her like Shinji Ikari, and no one made her hurt him.

It was all her, and it always had been.

The soda was warm. She tossed it on the ground and let it leak into the cracks in the pavement. Dark blood tracing a river's current.

((()))

Misato was six beers deep by the time Shinji walked through the front door. He didn't speak. She heard the quiet shuffle as he removed his shoes. He entered the kitchen a moment later. His eyes met hers. Her best effort at a smile felt weak, so she followed it with weaker words.

"Hey, kid," she said.

"Hey," he said.

"Where you been?" she said.

"The hospital." He looked at the sink. "You didn't put the dishes away."

She thumbed the rim of her beer. "No, I didn't. I'll take care of it in a minute."

Without comment, he began the work himself. He donned his apron and turned on the faucet. Dishes clanged in the sink as he scrubbed. Pen-Pen, who had been sitting on the table in front of Misato, turned at the sudden clamor. Misato sat and drank.

Eventually, the cupboards opened and he started to pack the dishes away, one at a time, with practiced ease. Misato pushed herself away from the table and stood up. She leaned against the counter near him and watched him work. He never complained, never asked for special treatment. He never really asked for a reason, either—for any of it.

It was all so beyond him, she realized. A terrifying adult world that moved to its own rhythm, heedless of his wants and needs. She had known as much for a long time. Shinji's isolation, his tenderness, were things taken too often for granted. She had been too willing to shove him into that adult world.

And now, with everything she had learned, that same adult world seemed as incomprehensible to her as it likely was to him. What right did she have to make him do anything?

The sight of him cleaning up a mess again, even during all that he was going through, made her heart break.

"Shinji," she said. "I want to talk to you."

He rinsed a plate and set it aside, to await the towel. "There's nothing to talk about."

"Yes there is."

"I'm not going to pilot it again," he said. "Ever."

"I know."

"You can't make me do it."

"I know that, too." She set her beer down on the counter. "I'm sorry."

"I don't want to talk about it, Misato."

He didn't deserve any of this. It wasn't fair that he had to bear all this alone—all their hopes, all their plans for survival. He wasn't built for it. No one was.

She wanted to make this better. She reached for him, for his shoulders. If she could just hug him, make him feel that he wasn't alone—

He batted her hand away. "Please don't."

"Shinji, I'm so sorry." She stepped forward, reaching again. Fingertips found the cloth of his shirt.

"Stop! Please!" He backed away from her, dropping a bowl in the sink, the clatter of porcelain a gunshot in the small kitchen. "Please. Please don't touch me."

Misato stopped. She steadied herself on the rim of the sink. He backed away into the corner, pinning himself against the cupboard. She looked at him, at his frown, and felt a sudden shame build in her stomach, like needles in her gut.

"I have no clue what I'm doing," she said. It was true. She felt like she had come unmoored from reality. The Third Impact news, the loss of Unit 03, and now this—Shinji wanting to quit, to cut and run. It was too much to bear.

She felt the tears coming. Realizing she couldn't fight them, she decided not to try. She slid down the counter until she sat on the floor. Pen-Pen looked down from the table, eyeing her, confused.

"I screwed up bad, kiddo," she said, wiping her eyes. "I should've been there for you two. I shouldn't have gone to the test site and I should've told you it was Suzuhara the minute I learned of it."

Shinji stayed standing. Misato kicked the table leg in front of her, making the table jolt on the tile.

"I've been sitting here for hours, trying to think of something to say that would make all this okay. But I've got nothing that wouldn't be a lie." She thudded her head against the cupboards and swallowed around the lump in her throat. "So all I have left for you is the truth, kiddo. And the truth is that I'm a mess. We're all a mess. None of us adults have any clue what's going on, or how to help with any of this.

"We're all just scared and dumb and making it up as we go along. There's no instruction book for any of it. I think about my parents and what they did, and they didn't know anything, either. My dad was distant. Cold, even. He worked all the time and never seemed to care about me or my mom.

"They divorced when I was a kid. I only saw him sometimes from then on. Then he died saving my life." She wiped her face again. "So what the hell did I know? I thought the man didn't care for me, and then he went and did that. I spent years thinking about that, wondering what his true motivation was. What his real plan for me might have been. How he really felt.

"And you know what? I don't think he had any clue, either. If I've learned one thing from having the two of you here, it's that parents have no idea what they're doing."

Shinji's voice was quiet. "You aren't my parent."

"I know," she said. "But who is, then? Your dad, who never talks to you? Some teacher way up north, who hasn't sent you as much as a 'hey how are you' since you've lived here? Well, guess what: they don't know anything, either. They don't hate you, and they don't even dislike you. They just don't know what to do with you because you aren't them."

Shinji was silent, and his silence made it impossible to look at him.

"I can't give you any good answers for anything. I've spent the past few months putting every hope I had for mankind's future into you and Asuka, and you both handled the pressure better than I could've dreamed. I've tried my best to live up to that. You deserve better than my best, but my best is all I can give. Trust me, I feel like crap that my best hasn't been good enough."

Silence. Then, the crinkle of fabric as Shinji removed his apron, then the sound of his breath as he knelt down next to her. She turned and met his eyes for the second time that day. But now his frown was gone.

He held out a tissue box to her. "Your best is good enough for me," he said.

"That's sweet of you to say." Misato laughed, through her tears. She took a tissue and blew her nose, then crumpled it in her fist and tossed it away, towards the trashcan.

Shinji spoke. "I don't want to pilot anymore. I think I have to leave."

"No," Misato shook her head. "You can stay here. This is your home."

"But Asuka—"

"I know. I know." Misato reached out and touched his shoulder, but there was no greed in her touch, and so he didn't flinch from it. "What she did was wrong."

"I don't really want to talk about that now," he said.

Misato looked at him. "What happened to Suzuhara wasn't your fault, Shinji."

"I hurt him," he said. "No one else did it. Just me."

"You didn't know."

"That doesn't matter."

"Maybe not. What do you want to do now?" She sat up and leaned in, looking at him. "What is your plan? How do you want to make it right?"

"I'm staying at the hospital all that I can," he said. "I want to be there when he wakes up."

"Good. That's good. How can I help?"

"Don't ask me to pilot Unit 01."

"Done. You're off the combat roster."

"Just like that?" he said.

Misato nodded. "Just like that."

"You can do that?"

Misato gestured around the kitchen, at the lack of other people in their surroundings. "I can do whatever I want. I'm Operations Manager Major Misato Katsuragi."

"What if my father makes me?"

"Then I'll shoot him," she said, and for the first time in days, Shinji giggled. The sight made her smile. She touched his face, briefly, her thumb caressing his cheek. "Hey, there you are."

"Stop it." He moved her hand away, but without any fear or anger, so she hooked his head and shoulders in the crook of her arm and pulled him in, hugging him tight despite his yelping protestations. He pushed back, and she ruffled his hair before letting him go.

"Jerk," he said.

"Dork," she fired back.

He smoothed his hair and looked at her. "Misato?"

"Yeah, kid?"

"Thank you."

"Any time. Now either help me up or at least pass that beer down to me."

((()))

Asuka rang the doorbell and waited. She turned on the front porch and looked out across the small front lawn. The Horaki house sat atop a low hill in the western residential terraces of Tokyo-3. Asuka was here once before, when she walked Hikari home one day. Finding it again was easy enough, though it was later in the evening than last time. Walking to the door had been much harder.

Time stretched. She tapped her foot. She needed a friend, but her mind kept transplanting Kaji's disappointed look on every face in her life. Would this friend think the same thing? Thoughts of running entered her head. Better to avoid the possibility than let it manifest in front of her.

The door opened. Hikari stood in the frame, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. "Asuka!" she said, and rushed out to hug her. Asuka let it happen.

"Hey, Hikari," she said, patting her friend's back.

"The news said there was an explosion up north, and then a battle. I called Ms. Katsuragi's home, but I didn't get any answer. I was worried." Hikari unhugged herself and stood back. Her eyes glanced up and down Asuka's body, and her smile faltered. "What's wrong?"

Asuka's voice trembled. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"Just come inside," Hikari said. "You'll be okay."

((()))

Hikari's room was small and tidy. She had a TV, a game console, and a little desk for studying. Her closet was open, its contents orderly. Asuka stood in the middle of the room, waiting for her friend to return. Down the hall, she could hear Hikari ordering her younger sister and a friend to play nice and leave her alone for a bit. It was the same voice she used at school, when she brought a class in line or needed to chop one of the Stooges down to size.

She re-entered a moment later and closed the door. "Sit down," she said, pointing to the bed. "Please."

Asuka followed her instruction and sat. She pulled her jacket off and tossed it on the sheets next to her. Hikari looked at her again.

"What?" Asuka said.

"Nothing," Hikari said, too quickly. "You just look like you haven't been home in a while."

"I slept in the park last night." Asuka ran a hand through her hair. It was a tangled mess. She needed a shower and a brush and a change of clothes. "I don't want to go home. I don't think I can right now."

"I'm sure you can," Hikari said. "Ms. Katsuragi probably wants to know where you've been."

Asuka snorted. "I doubt that."

"Why do you say that?"

"She hasn't called me and she hasn't come looking for me. After what I did, I don't think she could care."

Hikari sat down next to her. "You're freaking me out, Asuka. What's going on? Is everyone safe?"

"I don't know what to say right now."

"Say whatever you want. I'm your friend. You can tell me anything."

Hikari Horaki was notoriously bad at falsehoods. She couldn't keep a secret, she couldn't hide what she felt, and she couldn't tell a lie if it meant saving her life. She was honest to a fault. Aside from a great many other qualities, it was that honesty which had drawn Asuka to her in the early days of her time in Japan. In a life filled with dishonest adults and complicated peer relationships, Hikari's openness was immediately appealing.

Now, Hikari's smile was warm; obviously worried, but still warm. Asuka trusted it.

"Shinji hates me now," she said.

"That's crazy."

"No, it's true. I lied to him. I used him and made him do something terrible, and now he's quitting."

"Quitting what?"

"Piloting," Asuka said, in a way that implied a 'duh, idiot' that hadn't been spoken, as if piloting was the most obvious thing in the world, a focal point of not just her life but of every child's life. Hikari was gracious enough not to be offended. "I was the reason he stayed around so long and now I've hurt him, too."

As she said the words, she replayed the moment in her head. Him throwing his headband down. His feet hitting the grating as he marched away. Her standing in the cage, alone, hating herself until the lights shut off, and realizing he might never love her again.

"It can't be that bad," Hikari said.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm sure he'll change his mind."

Asuka looked up from her shoes. "Why would he do that?"

"I'm not supposed to tell you," Hikari said. She patted her lap with her hands, trying to keep the secret in. Her efforts failed. "Okay, okay, but you can't tell anyone."

Asuka frowned. "Tell anyone what?"

"You know Toji Suzuhara? He's going to be a pilot!" Hikari grinned. "He told me after school a couple days ago. He didn't tell anyone else, and I didn't want to say anything to you until he did. But isn't that great? Whatever you did, I bet Shinji will stick around now that his friend is doing the same job you do."

Asuka's fists balled at her sides. She couldn't look at Hikari anymore.

"Asuka?" Hikari's hand was on her shoulder again, rocking her gently. "What's wrong?"

"Suzuhara is in the hospital," Asuka said, trying to get it all out at once. "He's there because of what Shinji did to him… Something I made him do."

((()))

Hyuga met her with a "Good morning, ma'am" as soon as she exited the elevator on her office floor. He had a datapad in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other, and a sheaf of folders pinned in an armpit.

"That all for me?" Misato said.

"Yes, ma'am." Hyuga nodded at her crutch. "Figured you could use the extra hands. What do you want first?"

"Coffee," she said. "Then agenda."

They walked together, him filling her in as she crutched and sipped her way along.

"Units 00 and 03 are in the repair cages. Dr. Akagi is already at work, though there have been some logistical snags on getting the repairs started."

That checked out. Most large-scale operations at Nerv experienced such delays. The number of departments, the scale of the projects, and the weight of the funds needed to do anything tended to gum up the works. "Tell her I'll be down ASAP," she said. "What else?"

"Central defense needs clearance on the new ordnance deliveries."

"That's not due in till 1300."

"Correct, ma'am."

"I'll sign the waivers over lunch."

"Your lunch is actually booked, ma'am. A meeting with Commander Ikari."

"We don't have a command staff meeting till next week."

"Not with the command staff, ma'am," Hyuga said. "Just with you."

Misato kept her face as neutral as possible. "When was this scheduled?"

"First thing this morning."

"Did the message say anything else?"

"No, ma'am. Just the time and place. His office." Hyuga stopped outside her office door and let her step inside. He stayed in the hall. "I also made that change you called about last night, before I clocked out. The Third Child is off the combat roster."

Misato didn't need him to spell out the correlation for her. She made an adjustment regarding his son and now he wanted to talk about it.

She set her coffee down and collected the datapad and folders from her adjutant. She signed the ordnance release forms with a stylus and handed the datapad back to him. "Thank you, Lieutenant," she said.

"Yes, ma'am." He turned on his heel to leave, then paused. "Good luck," he told her.

She forced a smile. "Never needed it."

Throughout the morning, Ritsuko did not bring up any of the topics covered the day before. Misato expected nothing different—after all, it would be monumentally stupid to discuss the pending apocalyptic plans of their leader inside of headquarters. Still, the ease with which they did not talk about it, and the simplicity of falling back into the traditional working relationship, was disconcerting. It was after they had left the repair cages, as the two sat together with technician Ibuki in the data analysis chamber, speaking of Unit 03's clean scans, that Misato began to realize how Ritsuko kept herself sane all these years.

The secret, festering inside her, must have been kept in check by her work; a focus on the mundane, the troubles of day-to-day problem management, all served to keep her anxiety at bay. Misato wondered how long her friend had lived like this, passively lying and disappearing into her duties.

Ritsuko took a sip of coffee. "What?" she said, looking at her over the rim of her glasses.

"Nothing," Misato said. She made a show of stretching her leg. "Just a cramp."

Ritsuko arched an eyebrow, but did not push the issue. She glanced back at her data. "Unit 03's genetics are stable. No sign of infection remains, at least that I can tell. I'd say my initial hypothesis was correct—we can salvage the unit."

"That's good."

"It will take time, of course—maybe a month or so—but we can do it. The only trouble is the pilot."

"Look for a replacement," Misato said.

"The pilot is still alive, for now. If he can mend—"

"Look for another one, Doctor." Misato leaned against an inload console, setting her crutch against the desk beneath her. "We owe him that much."

Ritsuko inclined her head and returned to her work.

Ibuki spoke up to fill the silence. "His sister has been transferred," she said. "Her specialist staff was moved, too. Physical therapist and all. They'll be operating out of our facilities for the remainder of her rehabilitation."

"Thank you, Maya." Misato looked at her watch. "I have a lunch thing," she said, getting to her feet.

"Don't talk first."

Misato turned. "What?"

Ritsuko didn't look up from her station. It was as though she had never spoken.

Misato walked away.

((()))

On Misato's list of impossible things that could never happen, having lunch one-on-one with Gendo Ikari had to be very near the top. Where the table came from was a mystery to her. It was large enough to seat maybe a dozen people. Did he ever entertain a dozen people in his gloomy office? Was it just a feature of the facility, designed before the designers realized that the office would be occupied by an anti-social bastard.

It was excellent food, too. Toro and unagi don with a side of grilled Matsutake mushrooms, served by an actual wait staff. Were they on the payroll, too? Did Nerv have a catering department she had never heard of? And, more importantly, could she have spent the past year dining on high-priced sushi and endangered mushrooms instead of crappy cafeteria food?

Commander Ikari ate in silence. Beyond the greetings they had exchanged upon her entering, they had not spoken.

Don't talk first.

Easier said than done. The silence was near to a physical presence in the room, filling in the space as the wait staff exited, closing in on the meal like a third guest. Misato reflected that she had never spoken with Ikari one on one before. Most of her time with him was in command staff meetings, where she was but one of a group, and Ritsuko did all the talking. Any singular meeting had always featured Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki. It was always her impression that the Sub-Commander served in an interpretive role to Commander Ikari, tempering his ideas and, more often than not, serving as his mouthpiece.

But now Fuyutsuki was in the hospital, Ritsuko was nowhere to be found, and Misato was stuck here, eating grilled eel and sweating through her uniform.

Don't talk first.

It helped that she had nothing to say—or at least nothing to say that wouldn't get her fired or killed. Or both.

So she bit and chewed and swallowed and looked at everything in the room that was not Commander Ikari—which is to say she looked at the windows and floor and ceiling and that was about it because there wasn't a single damn thing in this office worth looking at aside from the insane swirls on the ceiling and floor. Against that sparsity of furniture and omnipresence of empty space that he, Ikari, managed to dominate the chamber, even though he was only a small fraction of its size.

Which, she suspected, was the exact point.

For want of anything else to distract her, she watched him eat. He did not look at her. He wore his gloves still, even at the table. Was he that self-conscious about the burns?

"You've taken the Third Child off the combat roster," he said, suddenly. "Why?"

Alright, straight to the point. Good. "I felt it was necessary," she said. "His last sortie was traumatic."

"All sorties have a potential for trauma."

"Yes, sir." Misato set her chopsticks down. "I let him off the roster as a preventative measure, sir."

"Explain."

"Shinji expressed a desire to leave. I decided it would be better to keep him here than to let him go. The offer of removing him from the combat roster kept him here."

"If he does not want to pilot, then we do not need him here."

"Sir, without a pilot for Unit 01—"

"We have the dummy system, and we have Rei." Ikari set his dish aside and wiped his mouth with a napkin, carefully, before folding it and setting it aside, too. It was a practiced gesture. A learned gesture. "We don't need the Third Child."

"We also lose nothing by keeping him nearby, sir."

"Perhaps not." Ikari looked at her. "Do you think he can still be of use?"

Misato blinked. What was happening? What did he want out of her, here? Was he trying to prove that she was in his confidence, that he trusted her? Or was he trying to see how much she knew, how much she cared?

"Possibly, sir," she said. "The longer he is here, the more likely he is to pilot again. That's my feeling."

The Commander watched her for a moment, then nodded, suddenly, as if a decision had been made. "That is acceptable," he said. "You are dismissed."

Misato stood, grabbed her crutch, and left the office as the wait staff returned to clear dishes. She did not look back.

((()))

Shinji wasn't sure why he was allowed in the hospital in the first place. His Nerv ID earned him his way through the front door and into the ward, but there was nothing stopping the staff from removing him at any time. This was a priority ward, after all—intensive care for Nerv personnel. It was a busy place.

The first two days, he sat outside the surgery ward, with no visibility and no way to know what was happening. Just the sounds of nurses talking, heels on tile, the quiet tap-tap-tap of keyboards, and PA announcements, broken only by the damning silence of his own thoughts.

Today was different. Sometime during the night, Toji was released from the surgery ward and moved to standard intensive care. Shinji was notified by a nurse. How she knew he was there for Toji, or why he was allowed in, was a mystery to him. He suspected Misato's involvement.

Toji was unconscious, still, and on the other side of a pane of glass, but at least he was in eyesight. Shinji looked in on him. He recalled the sight of Toji being pulled from the crushed entry plug, one side of his body a blood-slick ruin. He suspected that same ruin now hid beneath the folds of gauze that wrapped his torso, arm, and half his head. The arm was in a cast, haloed in metal pins and wires. Additional support.

Shinji stood there a long time, listening to the beep of monitoring equipment. Nurses spoke to him at intervals, assuring him that he could go in, if he so desired. He did not desire, and so he stayed put. Entering seemed unconscionable. A violation. He barely felt deserving even to stand here, watching over the friend he had nearly murdered.

Time passed.

"Shinji!"

The voice made him turn. Kensuke Aida walking towards him, a forced smile on his face.

"How are you here?" Shinji began to say, then stopped himself when he saw the people behind Kensuke—Hikari Horaki and Ayanami. Ayanami's card, he realized. She let them in.

"What are you doing here?" he said, instead.

"To see Toji," Kensuke said. "Can't let the guy sit in this hospital all alone. Gotta see if he's doing okay and—"

Kensuke looked through the window and the rest of his words died on his lips. He stared in at his friend, eyes wide, uncomprehending.

Hikari wore her schoolbag over both shoulders. She stood at the window next to him and looked in. Her expression was hard to look at. "I brought some homework," she said, numb. "I thought he might be able to do it. I don't…"

Ayanami stood away from the rest of them, hands at her sides. Silent.

Shinji looked back at her, meeting her eyes. He wanted to speak with her, ask her why she, in particular, had come here. He didn't get the chance.

"What did you do?" Kensuke said, turning to him. "He was your friend!"

The words sent prickles through Shinji's nerves, a fight or flight response. He felt his skin flush at the accusation—an acute enhancement of the anxiety that had filled him for two days. He thought of an apology, but his mouth was dry, and he knew that the words would sound stupid the moment he said them. What worth was _I'm sorry_ against the weight of a ruined life?

"It wasn't his fault," Hikari said.

Kensuke spun toward her. "What does that mean?"

"Asuka told me it wasn't his fault." Her eyes didn't leave the figure beyond the glass. "She made him do it. It wasn't his fault."

"That's not true," Shinji said. "I did it. She wasn't out there. It was just me."

Kensuke looked ready to continue arguing, but Hikari stopped him.

"Mr. Aida, stop it. What's done is done." She pointed at the glass. "The important thing is that Toji is still alive."

"He wouldn't be hurt at all if it wasn't for what Shinji did to him."

"He also might be dead if it wasn't for Shinji. Who knows what they would have had to do to stop that machine if Shinji had refused?"

"Well, they didn't do that, did they?"

"Shut up," Hikari said. "Do you want to stand here being angry, or go in and see him?"

Kensuke frowned at her, but seemed to agree. He stepped towards the door, then looked back at Shinji, briefly. "I can't believe you," he said, before going inside, crossing the barrier that Shinji couldn't cross himself.

Hikari made to follow him, but stopped at the threshold. "He's wrong, you know," she said.

Shinji shook his head. "Probably not."

Hikari nodded, and then went inside. The door slid shut behind her. Shinji watched them approach Toji, each on separate sides of the bed—Kensuke near his injured side, Hikari near the opposite. She found a chair and sat. Kensuke kept standing. From behind, Shinji could only see the shake of his head and the slump of his shoulders.

And the faint reflection of blue hair and red eyes in the glass.

"You don't want to go in?" Shinji said.

"No. Do you?" Rei's voice was a ghost. He did not look at her, and found that it was easier to be honest with a ghost. "

"More than anything. But I can't." He took a breath and tried to exhale the fire in his nerves. The effort was partially successful. "I suppose that doesn't make much sense," he said.

"It makes sense."

"I suppose you know that I'm quitting."

"I did not know that."

"Well, I am. I don't want to do this anymore."

"What about our bond?"

Shinji snorted. "What about it? Look at him, Rei. We're hurting each other."

"I did not hurt him. I tried, but I could not."

"And look what they did to you for it. Look what my father did to you. Can you still feel it?"

"Yes," Rei said, without hesitation.

"They blew your neck seals while your synch was still active."

"It was the only choice," Rei said. "I would have been compromised otherwise. I failed to achieve a mission objective."

"Well, I didn't, and look where it got me." Shinji set his jaw. "I should have never come here. I should have stayed home, and just forgotten about my father."

Rei spoke. "You still hate him."

"Absolutely. You planning to slap me again?"

It was as if she did not hear him, as if there was nothing to add on that topic. He realized this was Rei's way of dealing with an uncomfortable topic.

"What will you do now?" she said, instead.

"Misato says I can stay with her still, but I'm off the combat roster." Shinji turned back to the glass. "My place is here now, until he wakes up. I owe him that much."

Rei's reflection hesitated, then it moved, stepping forward until it was at his side. Her face was in his peripheral vision.

He looked over at her. "What are you doing?"

"Staying with you," she said, "as long as I can."

((()))

Asuka was in the living room when Misato got home. She sat on the floor, four-style, a bag of chips in her lap. The TV was on. Misato dropped her keys on the kitchen table and leaned against the doorframe of her bedroom, looking down at her roommate.

"I stayed the night at Hikari's," Asuka said, explaining herself.

"I know," Misato said.

"Pilot security?"

"No. Her older sister called and let me know, last night. Did you go to school today?"

Asuka nodded. "Hikari let me borrow one of her uniforms."

Misato glanced at the TV. A game show was on, the contestants lined up behind a countertop, all smiles and laughs. Asuka's hand rustled in the chip bag.

"Where did you stay the night before?" Misato said.

"The park." Rustle. Chomp. "Hikari's uniform was too small."

"She's a small girl."

"I think she hates me now."

"She doesn't hate you."

"My boyfriend put her boyfriend in the hospital, and it's my fault." Rustle. Chomp. "She didn't say it or anything. She's too Japanese to be rude. But I know she hates me."

"I'm very sorry to hear that."

"Most people hate me now." Asuka shrugged. "Kaji. Shinji. Hikari. Wondergirl."

Misato watched and waited for what she knew was coming.

"You," Asuka said.

"I don't hate you, Asuka." Misato got down on her knees and sat next to her pilot. Just crouching down sent pain through her body. "Shinji doesn't, either."

"He quit."

"Yes, but he isn't leaving. He's staying right here with us."

"Why?"

"Because I asked him to," Misato said. "And because he still needs us."

Rustle. Chomp. "I'm not sorry about what I did," Asuka said. "You can all hate me or whatever. I don't care."

"No one hates you, Asuka."

"Kensuke Aida asked if I wanted to go to the hospital with him and Ayanami and Hikari, after school," she said. "I figured Hikari made him ask, but it wasn't Hikari. He told me it was Ayanami's idea."

Asuka reached into her bag again. Nothing but crumbs. She crumpled the bag into her fist and set it aside.

"She didn't even ask me herself." Asuka lowered her head, so that her eyes were obscured by her bangs. "Am I so worthless that she can't even talk to me, face to face?"

Misato tried to think of something to say—words of healing, of honesty, that would pull her out of this dark place the way Shinji had done for her the previous evening—but the words would not come. Her hand hovered near her pilot's shoulder.

Then, like a distant thunder which grew through the canyons of the city outside, the attack sirens began to howl. Low at first, then with growing confidence, until the noise was all-consuming.

Asuka looked up at the sound, then at her guardian, a need written clearly in her eyes.

The phone rang an instant later—priority alert, calling for confirmation.

"Get your shoes," Misato said, standing up. "It's time to go to work."


End file.
